Books

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Fantastic, wide-ranging story that starts in 1962 in a tiny Italian seaside village, visits Richard Burton on the set of Cleopatra, swings through 1970s Seattle and lands in Edinburgh, Los Angeles and Idaho in the present day. The five "main" characters and supporting cast bounce off of each other over the years, tied together by an awful, classic Hollywood producer that really just wants to sell his hookup reality shows. I'd call it a classic beach read, and it is, but that isn't fair to the storylines --- they are superb.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard Feynman

This is a great (albeit repetitive, thanks non-fiction) collection of speeches and interviews with Richard Feynman. He was an amazing guy, with nary an ounce of guile or condescension. He was able to connect super-abstract concepts with the immediate physical world, but I don't think it was an attempt to dumb anything down. You get the sense that this is just how he thought about things. And he believed so deeply in the concept of science: that there is truth in the natural world, and you can learn that truth by making guesses and testing them. He had no problem with doubt or failure or looking silly --- he just kept trying to figure out how stuff worked. Admirable top to bottom, and a fun read to boot, sprinkled with anecdotes from his childhood, Los Alamos, and more.

The Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith

I love Precious Ramotswe and the HBO show set in her world, so this was an obvious pickup from the used bookstore. It's an easy, light story in a friendly place where the main characters do their best to be good people. The everyday but waning customs of "old Botswana" make for great storytelling and unique dialogue. Smith gets a lot of grief about appropriating a culture than isn't his, and as an old, male, white Scot that ain't wrong 😉 --- but he grew up in South Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and there is no way these books exist without love and respect for their subjects. I'm glad he's written them.

The Society of Unknowable Objects by Gareth Brown

I am always leery of "magic" stories --- the idea that you can just do anything at any time seems like cheating, and often leads to lazy storytelling and too much TAMO. The first few chapters of this one felt that way, but there wasn't much else in the house left to read so I stuck with it. Glad I did! The story is actually really creative and holds together incredibly well. Exciting and actually pretty nuanced; the ending is messy, just like real life.

A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster

My semi-successful Month of Sudoku left me curious about game design. A Theory of Fun isn't quite what I thought it would be, but was super-interesting and insightful nonetheless. More like an extended presentation (with cartoons!), I zipped through in in just a couple of sessions. There's way too much to unpack in a paragraph, and I need to learn more before writing a full piece. A few nuggets: (1) it's important to separate the game from its dressing --- a good game stripped down to just its mechanics is still fun; (2) most games teach us the same stuff --- power, dominance, territory, resources --- that's been important forever, but they lag teaching skills of the modern age; (3) games are not stories, and trying to mash those things together usually fails; (4) too many mechanics sucks. This last really resonates with me, sorry Alex. 😉

The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman

Back in high school, my daughter created a web series about the years after a disease kills everyone over the age of eighteen --- she recommended Ice Cream Star as one of the best books out there with a similar theme. At least for me, this one was really unique and impressive. Some of it is standard (well done) apocalypse fare, the old world peeking through for us to discover; the evolution of various groups into tribes of children is really great. What is really novel is the pidgin English that the whole book is written in --- I was amazed around chapter six when it just started being "normal" to my brain. The forcing of adult roles onto kids of eight, ten, fifteen is tough to accept, but the book never forgets that "littles" are still little and they are kids at heart. Super well-done.

Cabin by Patrick Hutchison

I absolutely tore through this one. I mean, are you going to find a better pick for Sean than a guy building a cabin in the woods in Index, Washington with (much) more enthusiasm than experience? You cannot. The insights hit again and again --- the part where he wants to show off his staircase to everyone felt like he'd been spying on me personally. OK, the landslide was a little close to home ... but this is just a great book written by somebody looking for their place in the world. Loved it completely.

A Year with the Seals by Alix Morris

I always call a greeting when seals swim by our place on Whidbey --- and they always stop and turn and hang around for a bit. We are best buddies, after all! They follow our paddleboards and kayaks and often watch from just a few feet away as we drop or retrieve crab traps. Morris clearly shares my "sea puppy" feelings for seals and sea lions, but does a credible job representing the diversity of viewpoints about them. Their recovery over they last fifty years has been remarkable but not entirely rosy --- playing a role in dwindling fish stocks and even the increased presence of sharks along busy beaches. She doesn't offer a lot of "fixes," but that's fair --- the story is complex and nobody has an easy answer. A worthy read.

The Mercy of Gods by James. S. A, Corey

A group of aliens appears at the planet Anjiin and utterly, completely kicks the living crap out of the humans that live there. An eighth of the population is summarily executed just to demonstrate their power, then select groups are loaded onto transport ships and taken to another world where they are given problems to solve. If they are useful they live, if not, they are killed. It's not like the Carryx are "evil" per se, they simply don't perceive other species as relevant. They use humans like we'd use a rock or a tree branch as tool. The meat of the book is how different humans react to this reality --- with a secret twist that establishes room for all the sequels to come.

Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

Abundance caps a solid trio of future optimism (following Enlightenment Now and Stellar). The thesis here is aimed at liberals: an abundant future is possible, but we have to rethink the way we organize government. The "classic" liberal toolbox of regulation and legal challenge --- super-effective starting in the 70s as a way to account for societal/environmental costs not acknolwedged by the market --- has become an impediment to the massive buildout of green tech, housing and innovation that we'll need to succeed. Klein and Thompson hold up successes like penicillin, Apollo and Operation Warp Speed, and I buy that thesis, but don't think they really nail the "how" of getting that crisis-response vibe into more "everyday" settings like local zoning --- just "removing" regulation puts us right back where we started. I think may actually be a briliant AI story here. So much to work on ...

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

Another exploration of consciousness, self and intelligence, wrapped up in a great story. Humans, a few flavors of AI, and octopi all mix it up on and around Con Dao, an island preserve purchased as a research station by a huge multinational bugaboo. The core of it all is minds trying to understand other minds. One favorite nugget from amongst a million: "Imagining what is not there is the key to our creativity." Good stuff and a good start to the 2026 list!