Books

Brilliant historical fiction from 1845 NYC. Timothy Wilde finds himself an officer of the newly-formed New York Police Department. A series of (of course) horrific murders of "kinchin-mabs" pulls him through a city that has grown tenfold in the last half century, filled with Irish immigrants and run by an almost hilariously-corrupt (but seemingly-well-intentioned) party machine. A great way to round out a year of books.

Stellar is a bonkers book, full of crazy word salad arrow-filled diagrams that make very little sense. At the same time, it makes a credible argument for an amazing future — an optimistic, beautiful, qualitative leap forward for humanity that I want to be part of... read more

Went wandering the shelves for a "classic" novel and this one called out, probably because Willa Cather seems to be a favorite Jeopardy clue. Written in 1913 about immigrant farmers on the Nebraska prairie, it's a super-engaging read with crisp characters that seem familiar and real (both admirable and less so). Definitely going to pick up a copy of My Antonia and add it to the queue for next year!

A classic pseudo-physics scifi classic, still creative and fun 55 years later --- almost as old as me! The whole "luck" thing gets old pretty quick though, and I'm still not sure I get what was going on with the thread and the mountain. Big fan of the warrior cat though.

A compelling story about a priest and his compatriots in WW2 Rome using a base in Vatican City to help Allied POWs escape to safety. The story is told in a mix of traditional narrative and interviews with different participants, and it's a great read. But honestly, it feels just a bit weird to be telling a completely made-up story set in a real time when so many real heroes and villains did so many similar things. I love historical fiction, but for some reason this one feels a bit exploitative. Wish I could explain that better ... would love to hear if others get the same vibe.

A dystopian future --- one that's disturbingly "near" including a casual reference to the country's first proudly illiterate president. Awesome. But the book is full of great characters trying to make their way in a rapidly disintegrating environment. Not trying to be heroic, just trying to share quiet, happy lives despite what is happening around them. Of course heroics find them anyways. The story moves quickly and it's hard to put down --- the very definition of a page turner!

I swear it was a coincidence that I was reading On Trails just at the moment when my dad and I road-tripped a small moving truck from Florida to Colorado (go Penske). But it did make for some interesting connections. While it opens and closes with discussions of the Application Trail and the International AT, this isn’t a “hiking” book. The central thesis (at least to my reading) is that trails act as “social memory” — helping groups from insects to people share knowledge and history... see more

All you need to know is "Artemis Darth Vader," a bacon and western-loving alien occupying the body of a young girl, on the run from shadowy government agents. Saddle up for an adventure, hoss! A great story that's more about family than aliens at the end of the day. Give it a shot.

I can't shut up about The Vinyl Cafe and the late Stuart McLean (and Dave, Morley, Sam, Stephanie, Kenny, Carl, Burt, Mary.....). He's hands down the best live storyteller I've ever heard, and the world he created is the world I want to live in. Listen here (seriously, listen here). Anyways, The Vinyl Cafe Notebooks is different but still awesome --- a collection of short, two or three page essays McLean wrote about everything. And I do mean everything. Eclectic, funny, thoughtful and very much worth the time.

Three stories across time, swirling around the Thames, Tigris, Gilgamesh and the Yizidi. I thought it was a bit woo-woo at first but it more than grew on me. Deep, relatable characters and brilliant historical tie-ins. Exactly the kind of historical fiction that keeps me coming back to the genre.

Found this in a great Ventura used book store; written in the 1970s but apparently just re-released a few years ago because GRR Martin said he used it as a source for Game of Thrones, ha! Classic slow nonfiction pacing, but a really deep and detailed look at the real day-to-day of life in the (mostly) 12th - 14th centuries. Great stuff!

The review on the back cover says it'd make a good movie a la Earthquake or Towering Inferno, and that captures it perfectly. Classic 70s disaster pulp, with gruff middle-aged (white) guys in some position of technical or leadership expertise gettin' done what needs to get done while chain smoking and neglecting their families (then regretting it). Fundamentally silly but great fun and a quick read.

Picked this one out of the shelves of our home library, bought in 2008 and only just got to it! As I've said before, I struggle with the repetition that plagues so many non-fiction books and yes, there was a touch of that here. But I am really glad I stuck with it because the subject is endlessly fascinating and Levitin does a remarkable job of explanation. He describes (at least insomuch as we understand) how sound enters and moves through the brain, why we like what we like, why different instruments sound the way they do (and how synthesizers work), how movement (dance) and music are intertwined, and much more. Honestly it's much more than just a music book --- it's a remarkable journey through the way we think across domains.

Beyond delivering great plot and characters, Doctorow always does two things I really love. First, he is an true and honest 70s-90s tech nerd. His references are true and nostalgic and I eat that up. Second, he makes me believe that people sometimes actually choose to act for the greater good. On that second one he's not naive, but he counterbalances Gordon Gecko with everyday folks just trying to pitch in. This is why I come back to his books again and again. This one centers around two 80s tech companies: one run by a trio of nasty religious elders, the other by a trio of their ex-employees. Two days nonstop; always sad when they're over.

Solid writing and some interesting devices (the butterfly!) here, but at the end of the day the time travel "science" was just a bit too hand-wavy for me. The way it was pitched at first was really like super-hi-res memories which just didn't seem that impressive. Then suddenly we were untethered and all kinds of stuff was changing --- but the "explanations" were word salad that I just couldn't get into. Worth it as a quick fun read, but not as a keeper.

This is an epic story --- late thirties, a Jewish kid from Prague is sent to America by his family to escape the Nazis and ends up with his cousin in NYC. Together they ride the golden age of comic books, Sammy on story and Joe on art. WWII, McCarthyism, homophobia, families, comics and magic --- a great and sweeping ride.

A straight up non-fiction history of each of the Channel Islands. I'm hoping to do a backpack this fall on one of the islands --- picked up this book to give me some context. Each one has a pretty amazing history, from native populations to gilded age sheep ranching to cattle, wineries, tourism, fur hunting and more. The author is a descendent of the Caire family which owned Santa Cruz for decades. 

This is an odd one! Two poor friends on Sicily use starving Athenian prisoners to put on the plays of Euripides in an old quarry-turned-prison. I picked it up in the Athens airport on the way back from vacation (18 Euro!), sucked in by the opening line: "So Gelon says to me, 'Let's go down and feed the Athenians. The weather's perfect for feeding Athenians.'" And so it goes from there. Quirky funny and sad --- nice to find a really unique story once in awhile.

Not sure I should have picked this one for a "vacation" read --- it's dark. Reuven is an 18-year-old Jew from Krakow, Poland during the German occupation of WW2 and man, this kid just cannot catch a break. At least in my generation, everyone read stories in school of the unbelievable inhumanity of the Nazis and collaborating populations just happy to go along. But it's so easy to forget, as we see more and more right in front of us every day. It may not vibe with a Cretan beach resort, but I'm glad I stuck it out.

I picked this up to read during downtime on our family trip to Greece, and ended up tearing through it in just the first few days. An amazing story with twist over twist and two engaging, sympathetic characters that you just keep rooting for. There's a deeply serious side to the book as well, a tough look at how women are so often steamrolled in the modern world, but it doesn't lecture at you. The story drives the message and it's just a great success.

Mason writes like Larry McMurtry (she also used to live next to my inlaws in rural PA, which is why I picked up the book when I saw it at the Abednego bookstore in Ventura). Told from the perspective of 16 year old Sam, In Country is really about men trying to live their lives after coming back from Vietnam. It's well-told and hits hard --- highly recommended.

It feels like I've read this story before --- a fictional accounting of climate action / inaction over the next few decades, told from a few different individual perspectives with scientific and economic interludes throughout. Don't get me wrong, it's a solid book full of real detail, and probably unfair of me to feel jaded because this one was written before the others I've read. The best part is the overarching sense of "mess" --- humanity bumbling its way to climate solutions in the midst of all of the politics and greed that exist in the real world, and with many many crises along the way. If we do manage to succeed, I'm sure it'll look a lot like this.

Back to Doctorow! This is the second in the Marty Hench series, and it doesn't disappoint. Starts with a (more or less) silly Ponzi scheme selling fast food on Catalina, but quickly turns into a detailed takedown of private prisons and the corruption of leveraged equity manipulation in modern America. I really like the way Doctorow is able to tell a heavy story but keep you engaged and, yes, entertained.

A great novel written from the perspective of Jim/James, the runaway slave from Huckleberry Finn. Code switching plays a big role; the work of "fitting" into each situation is amazingly complex and fraught. The story moves quickly too, with short punchy chapters --- a nice feature in a book that forces you to feel the shame of that era.

The “longevity” industry really rubs me the wrong way — mostly a bunch of rich white guys clinging desperately to their 30s with marathons and trophy wives and Rogaine. But a friend I respect recently started building tech for a “longevity” venture and told me I had to read this book, so I did. And while I’m no convert, Attia is clearly a smart guy who makes a credible case. read more

One from the public domain! The Lost World is a great adventure and a quick read. You have to be willing to skim through a bunch of victorian/eduardian-white-mans-burden kind of stuff, but that's to be expected for a book written in England in 1912. Descriptions of the modern and prehistoric worlds of South America are worth the cost of admission (which is $0, ha).

A recommendation from a party where we'd somehow transitioned from decorating cookies to debating the likelihood of AI sentience. Klara is an "AF" ("artificial friend") to a teenage girl suffering health effects from genetic "lifting," a process that boosts intelligence (or kills you, apparently). The book is written from Klara's perspective as she tries to understand what's going on and help her family. That perspective is the best part of the book, as she experiences things that are familiar to us but interpreted through her AI context. I burned through it in about three days; one of those works that hides really thoughtful concepts inside a story you can't put down.

A couple of freelance adventure journalists "transect" the length of the Grand Canyon on foot, aided by some folks who actually know what they're doing. It turns out that this is really, really hard and only has been done by a few folks ever, which was surprising to me given the number of visitors that travel the river and the main routes. For every mile along the river, hikers need to travel many more, climbing and descending through hidden slots and tributaries, navigating miles up side canyons, and occasionally popping up to the rim for resupply. A great story and plenty of context on the history of the land, the peoples who have lived there and the characters that explore (and defend) it today.