Books

Mailman by Stephen Starring Grant

Another B&N in-person discovery, love that they're building stores again. A true story: Stephen Grant loses his white collar remote marketing job during the pandemic and takes a job as a rural mail carrier for the health insurance. It's a brilliant telling of a bunch of stories: what it means to work "blue collar" in America --- the tension (and hilarity) of a liminal community straddling a university town and rural Appalachia -- a guy trying just trying to make it for his family. I'm temporarily full of fun facts about the USPS, too; did you know rural carriers need to supply their own vehicle? Highly recommend this one.

Roads by Larry McMurtry

Another re-read, pulled from the shelf with my favorite travel books. I love slice-of-life travel --- but that's not this one. McMurtry (of Lonesome Dove and Some Can Whistle fame) sets off to drive the big highways across America at 80+ mph, covering hundreds of miles a day by flying away and then driving home. I also love a good highway, and it's hard to argue with his assessment of US2 across the northern US as the best in the country (although actually I've covered much of this route by train alongside the road). He's cranky and speaks his mind; a classic curmudgeon. I think it's almost time for me to get back on an interstate --- anybody need a car moved to Key West?

You Are Here by David Nicholls

So happy to have B&N stores back at our two local malls; I picked this one up during one of my attempts to ensure they stick around. Sped through it in just a couple of days, it's a great and relatable read --- two lonely middle-aged folks hassled into joining a mutual friend on a hike starting on the west coast of England headed east. They fall into each other a litlte bit at a time as Marnie keeps extending her hike just one more day. Is it a romance? Sort of, but a really good one and I'd love to hang out with both of them.

Hild by Nicola Griffith

My buddy Claude suggested Hild as a book to read during our trip through England and Scotland. It was inspired by Saint Hilda, but it's completely fictionalized --- and fantastic. In the story, Hild's father is poisoned when she's a small child. She and her mother work her way into a position of importance in the new king's court by acting as the king's "seer" ... mixing together a bit of actual "seeing" with a lot of "figuring out what people want to hear." She manages to grow up despite a ton of backstabbing politics and a very cynical transition from pagan gods to Christianity. It was indeed the perfect read for our trip --- fast moving and fun but with a ton of actual depth. A very different story but some of the vibes of Pillars of the Earth. And there's a sequel, so woo hoo!

Livesuit by James S. A. Corey

A novella from the same world as The Mercy of Gods, and (Alex says) important pre-reading for the next one in the series. Humans join up to fight the baddies in an elite force that live full time in enhancement suits that feed them, drug them, repair them and make them stronger. But of course there's a catch...

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

We're taking a trip to Bath in the UK later this month, and having tea at the Pump Room --- so it seemed mandatory to read a little Jane Austen. Satirical, silly and entertaining, albeit sometimes a bit hard to parse. I am now officially ready to "take the waters." That's what she said.

The Riveter by Jack Wang

A solid (fictional) story about a Canadian-Chinese man making his way through WW2, first in the shipyards and then as a paratrooper in Europe, all the while wishing he was back with his girlfriend in Vancouver. I wasn't in love with the character, but he was clearly the right guy to navigate some pretty awful stuff, and I was impressed with the complexity of his relationship with Poppy. A quick read and a good one, but not one I expect to remember forever.

The Fellowship of Ghosts by Paul Watkins

What happens when you book a vacation with the Smithsonian? You get a reading list! This one is a great travelogue, a guy who travelled Norway after hearing stories from a shipmate on a fishing boat. He's perhaps a bit heavy-handed about the mystique of it all, but I can live with that --- being by yourself in wild surroundings is pretty profound. And for sure I'm going to track down some Sodd canned dinner and, if I'm lucky, some semblance of Turistproviant while we're in Bergen.

Tap! by Rusty E. Frank

I'm a sucker for classic dancing movies --- Singing in the Rain was a frequent watch during breakfast when the kids were growing up. But I'm a casual consumer, really pretty ignorant about dancing as a form. Tap! was a gift from somebody who knows me well, and I loved it. The book covers dancers from 1900-1955, each section a quick biography followed by that actual dancer talking about themselves and their career (actually I'm assuming it's transcribed oral history; that's just what it seems like). It is super fun to read a bit and then find clips of that particular dancer on YouTube!

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen

This book is now squarely in my top ten list (I don't really have a list but if I did it'd be on it). Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet is a 12 year old boy from a ranch in Butte, MT who illustrates maps and diagrams for major scientific publications around the world. When he wins a major Smithsonian award, he embarks on a cross-country trip to give an acceptance speech in Washington DC. The plot is great --- but the genius is in the way TS observes the world, and the dozens and dozens of in-the-margin diagrams and side commentary throughout the book. He simultaneously acts as a detached scientist AND as a 12-year old kid trying to fit into an often-cruel world; the juxtaposition is irresistible. I'm going to watch the movie version soon, but I can't see how it would possible compare. Don't miss this one, seriously.

Sahara by Michael Palin

I am a sucker for a good travelogue, and Palin's trip around the Sahara (more broadly North and West Africa) back in 2001 is a really great one. He is funny when things are funny, but he is also very serious about understanding people and places. I learned a ton about how different regions have responded to decolonialization, and their (not easy and often unsuccessful) attempts to reclaim past identities while retaining the positives of a more modern world. The book was actually a side effect, written during filming of Palin's documentary of the same name, which I'll most definitely be watching soon.

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!