Finished reading: On the Hippie Trail by Rick Steves

An exuberant diary, apparently lost for four decades, of Rick Steves and his friend Gene traveling overland from Istanbul to Katmandu. This trail is likely impossible today, but the journey was inspiring—let’s go traveling!

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Finished reading: Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff

A series of interesting insights about building the life you want through small experiments. I particularly appreciated the concrete suggestions: make a pact, join a community, learn in public.

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Finished reading: The Formula by Joshua Robinson, Jonathan Clegg

For a new fan, this book was a great history lesson of the business of F1 and the transformation since 2017 or so, culminating in the insanity of the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix.

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Finished reading: Eldest by Christopher Paolini

I didn’t realize until the afterword that Paolini was only 21 when Eldest was published. What a masterwork for someone so young, and yet it explains some of the inelegance of plot elements and prose. I almost recognize some of the flaws from my own high school attempts at fiction (none of which, obviously, were published).

A fun continuance to the first book, this time with way too much deus ex machina and Marty Stu going on. But for what it is, an entertaining read.

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Finished reading: 1633 by David Weber.

The addition of David Weber got us even more Mary Sue/Marty Stu characteristics, but at least there’s some serious risk in this one, with some major players stuck in England under Charles II, Amsterdam under siege, and Scotland for reasons I don’t understand. Also a shooting war with the Americans’ fancy new weapons. It goes—well, some of column A, some of column B, lots of explosions.

Still, the story is wonderful if you can maintain incredible suspension of disbelief.

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Finished reading: 1632, Second Edition by Eric Flint

A rollicking alternate history with a thousand characters, most of whom can do no wrong. Serious divisions between heroes and villains, and an awkward writing style to boot.

But super fun if you can get past all that. I’ll be reading more.

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Finished reading: Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

I almost don’t want to admit I read this book. But I did. The story is fascinating.

But the writing continues to be without expertise. Yarros forgets she’s writing fantasy, or she just didn’t build a big enough world, or something. And the main character, a special magical girl who really only had one flaw in the first place (some physical weakness), appears to have lost even that—or, more likely, Yarros forgot that too.

The dragons continue to be awesome.

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Finished reading: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

This book about a girl growing up in Nazi Germany in 1939 is hard to get into. It is absolutely worth the patience.

I don’t want to write anything else for fear I might spoil it, except it is one of the very few books ever that has brought me to tears.

When Death has a story to tell, you listen.

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Finished reading: Eragon by Christopher Paolini

After Fourth Wing I decided I should go back to an older and wiser dragon novel. And yep, it was fun! Less sex, but more more wisdom, and no hokey failures to remember the fantasy realm is not the modern US.

Can’t say it was the best novel I’ve ever read, and it’s got all the standard Lord of the Rings cliches about a young man with an older mentor who turns out to be phenomenally powerful (maybe that’s more Star Wars than LOTR), but I love the slow build to an epic battle, plus the weirdo side characters that keep popping up.

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Finished reading: Countdown 1945 by Chris Wallace.

A fascinating, if a bit too prone to run down rabbit trails, look at the 116 days between Harry Truman becoming president and the United States dropping atomic bombs on Japan.

Maybe the most stressful time any President has ever had, although Washington, Lincoln, and Kennedy probably have some feelings about that.

Excellent narration, good structure, tons of info, highly recommended.

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Finished reading: Rocket Men by Robert Kurson

The success of Apollo 8 is one of the biggest achievements of American spaceflight, or possibly all human spaceflight. I love space stories, but I knew Apollo 11 and 13 far better than this one, so we listened to it on the way to Utah.

The story deserves a better author. This seems to be a theme with me recently: wishing that amazing stories had been told by better writers, or better editors maybe.

Kurson tells the story with excellence, but only most of the time. The weaving of biographies of the three crew members—Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders—along with their wives enlivened the whole adventure and added color to what was already an epic tale.

However, the author was obsessed with the possibilities of failure to the point of repeating them in many chapters; I think he recited the litany of possible SPS failure modes and their consequences at least three times, which fully pulled us out of the story. And the chapter on the insanity that was America in 1968 was interesting, but he didn’t tie it to the story of Apollo 8 at all.

Finally, the book wouldn’t end. It had about one too many chapters—once the injection back to Earth was complete, we didn’t need any more spaceflight story—an epilogue that was far, far too long (necessary, just way too much of it), and end matter that also went on forever.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in the Apollo missions, but be ready to forgive some repetition and inelegance and repetition.

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Finished reading: Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

This story is so epic it deserves better treatment. Unfortunately, this narrative weaves in dozens of names and focuses on a few, almost exclusively black women and white men (with few exceptions, nobody else is even named).

It also wandered around the Civil Rights movement, but without a clear aim.

In the end, we were left with a thousand great story elements but no story. (The movie, however, is excellent.)

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Finished reading: Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe.

Damn, what a book.

We follow a number of major characters in the Troubles of Northern Ireland from about 1968 to about 2016. I learned much more than I’ve ever known about this history.

The author vividly recounts individual stories so well that the book is basically an interleaved biography rather than a history. He explores anger and despair and confusion effectively. And the details are just amazing.

The only problem is that the book is only lightly structured, and there are so many characters that I was never sure where I was in the big picture of the book. There’s a framing device of a murder investigation, but that device only gets us half or two thirds through the book (with almost no signposts in between) and we lose all sense of scale and direction.

Maybe the book is a deliberate metaphor for the conflict in this way, because we also have the issue that the author goes to great pains to say that the IRA were terrorists and then makes the IRA main characters tremendously sympathetic, while doing nothing to justify the British/loyalist view.

Finally, the Irish accent of the voice actor is beautiful, if sometimes incomprehensible, and greatly heightened my enjoyment of the book.

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Finished reading: Fated by Benedict Jacka

These books are always recommended for folks who keep re-reading the Dresden novels because nothing compares.

Indeed, nothing compares. The feel is mostly the same—urban wizard who has a day job sucked into shenanigans with mind-numbingly powerful creatures and/or artifacts alongside an ingénue apprentice—but despite Butcher’s ham-handed early novels, Jacka has work to do. I’ll probably keep reading, because if Jacka’s series improves at the rate Butcher did, it’ll be spectactular soon enough.

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Finished reading: A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

I read this book to try to understand why it’s so popular, and I failed. It has all the trappings of a rollicking fantasy: a poor girl from the north is kidnapped by an evil magical being from a land she kind of thought was a fairy tale, where she discovers that not only does the villain have a heart of gold, but he’s not actually a villain, he’s the good guy in his own struggle of good versus an evil she can’t even contemplate.

But she’s a thoroughly unlikable character who is somehow nonetheless a Mary Sue, and the writing is mediocre at best. I would encourage a high school girl who wrote like this, but this author’s editor is clearly not interested in helping her out.

Not recommended for anybody. Go pick something by Naomi Novik instead.

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Finished reading: House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas

What an absolute mess of a book. But it’s clearly fantasy for somebody, and the world is definitely interesting. A better author could tell some great stories in this universe; this author needed to simplify and tell one excellent story instead of trying to set up a thousand future plotlines.

Recommended if you need some mindless airplane reading and don’t mind tropey fantasy.

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Finished reading: The Magicians by Lev Grossman.

It was not at all what I expected. Quentin is an unlikable main character; Penny and Eliot are hardly fleshed out; and Alice… well, I like Alice a lot. I really get the feeling Alice is the true main character and we’re just seeing it from Quentin’s point of view.

That said, it’s a welcome take on magical university being as hard or harder than an engineering degree instead of the floofy unconsidered mess that is Hogwarts.

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Finished reading: Assassin’s Quest by Robin Hobb

I cannot express my despair at the end of this book. As soon as I saw where the ending was headed, I didn’t want to keep reading and nearly put the book down. Kudos to the author, I guess, but it is endlessly sad, and I am pretty angry. 📚

Finished reading: Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros.

I went into this book thinking it was more YA fantasy. And it is! A special girl goes to school where her mom is in charge, and she learns she’s even more special than she thought! The small-town boy-next-door she grew up with turns out to be a giant jerk, and the dark, brooding, phenomenally attractive arch-enemy-with-a-heart-of-gold becomes the love of her life. And obviously they save the world together, or whatever.

But about two-thirds of the way through, there was an explicit, hardcore sex scene. And a few chapters later, there was another one—more abbreviated but no less hardcore. Not poorly written or ineffective, just shocking to me, the unprepared reader thinking this was basically Hunger Games with dragons.

Still a YA novel by genre, just aimed at not-so-YAs.

The fantasy world also gets routinely interrupted by Earth conventions like giving people the finger or naming the months “October”, “November”, etc. What are the chances this fantasy society developed the same Latin-derived month names and insulting hand gestures?

Despite it all, the story is intriguing enough and the writing light enough for me to check out the sequel. 📚

Finished reading: Royal Assassin (The Illustrated Edition) by Robin Hobb

The world continues to intrigue me, and Fitz continues to be a great conflicted character. I do think Hobb delights just a bit too much in hurting him, and the ending was even less satisfying than the first book.

I’ll probably still read the third book just to see how it ends. Nobody tell me if it doesn’t conclude this story.

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Finished reading: 2k to 10k by Rachel Aaron.

Picked this up off a Reddit thread. Good thing it was cheap, because it contains little advice a thinking writer doesn’t know (you should do some planning before you start writing!), and it needs editing very badly. Ironically, it has a chapter on editing and an acknowledgment of the editor of the second edition.

This author is successfully published in fantasy and sci-fi; I hope those books are much better-written than this one.

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Finished reading: Assassin’s Apprentice (The Illustrated Edition) by Robin Hobb.

I know I’m late to the Farseer trilogy/universe, but I really enjoyed this first installment. An unexplained Skill, a Wit, a Fool, more than one father figure, and a pretty classic fantasy setting.

I can’t wait to get started on the next one. 📚

Finished reading: Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree.

Fun prequel to Legends and Lattes, but missing some of the magic of the original. Still worth reading. Would be a great children’s/YA book with some light inessential cleaning up. 📚

Finished reading: Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Awesome investigation of evolution from a totally different (sci-fi) perspective. Made me think fun thoughts. Excellent up until the last couple of pages, which were totally disappointing, like the author didn’t know how to finish it.

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Finished reading: Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman.

A critical reminder that being the kind of person you feel you ought to be is impossible, and that’s okay—perhaps even freeing, when considered rightly.

Burkeman spends a lot of time repeating himself, but perhaps that’s part of the point: by repeatedly learning another way in which we can never “spend” time optimally, he maybe hopes to get just one ounce of understanding through.

That said, I found the nihilism offputting, even though I suspect he would argue that it’s not nihilism but realism. 📚

Finished reading: The Olympian Affair by Jim Butcher.

More swashbuckling! And spies! And a very weird planet. And cats. A good follow-up.

Now, Mr. Butcher, please get back to writing Twelve Months…📚

Finished reading: Slow Productivity by Cal Newport.

What a spectacular book for post-pandemic white-collar knowledge work. Partly philosophical and partly actionable, Newport says maybe we should step back from the cliff of minute-to-minute “pseudo-productivity” and consider the contribution of our entire lives or careers.

The hardest part for me is that I recognize everything he says in my workplace but I’m concerned about how radical even the lightweight suggestions he gives would be. I guess that’s an indication I should start implementing. 📚

Finished reading: Hangman’s Gate (War of the Archons 2) by R.S. Ford

This world of forgotten gods where prayer and worship actually affect their powers continues to fascinate me, but unfortunately the writing doesn’t measure up to the story. Too many threads opened without closure, as if the author assumes you can just open the next book. It’s possible to do this well in a series, and many authors have—just not this one.

Enjoyed the read, and I’ll probably pick up the next one, but I wish it had a better editor.

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Finished reading: The Sunlit Man by Brandon Sanderson

Apparently Sanderson’s fiftieth novel, and the last of the four Kickstarter books. Directly impacts the Cosmere, and the first of these weird ones where having read everything Cosmere really helps enrich the story.

A swashbuckling adventure—seriously. But of course with magic and mystery you expect.

My only complaint is that so much of the mystery of the early books is gone—we know so much now about Investiture and such that I’m no longer dazzled by it.

Still, a fun read. 📚

Finished reading: A Demon in Silver (War of the Archons) by R.S. Ford

Magic is creeping back into the world. Some parts think they’re ready; others have no idea; almost nobody’s prepared for what actually happens.

A fun read, with disparate threads that you just know have to fit somehow, but I wished for a little more sense of purpose rather than piling on more worldbuilding. 📚

Finished reading: The Law by Jim Butcher.

A fairly weak entry in the series, maybe intended as a palate cleanser after Battle Ground. We see a little of Dresden’s psyche, but not much. A short return to the early novels’ PI theme, but with Dresden as a far more powerful, and more broken, wizard. 📚

Finished reading: Heroes by Stephen Fry.

A fantastic addition to Mythos. Fry picks some of the best-known Greek heros (and one not-so-well-known) and brings them and their complete stories to life. He tells complete stories, bringing in all the crazy background and mythological history and real history. You get modern geography and philosophy and demography alongside Theseus and Perseus.

I have no nits to pick, except that again the audiobook, while delivered excellently by Fry himself, is mastered poorly, so keep your volume knob handy. 📚

Finished reading: Mythos by Stephen Fry.

Excellent retelling of the classic Greek myths. Plus some I’ve never heard. If you ever read (or refused to read) Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, you owe it to yourself to read this one. Fry brings the characters and stories to dramatic life, truly retelling rather than just reciting.

The audiobook was absolutely worth it—Stephen Fry reads it himself and is engaging and hilarious as always—although the dynamic range is incredibly high, so be careful with your volume. 📚

Finished reading: Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie. An epic end to an epic trilogy. Disappointing in all the best ways. One smidge darker than I’d hoped, but you have to be realistic about these things. 📚

Finished reading: Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie. Even better than the first. Characters you want to know better, mysteries abound, swords and sorcery and sex and what else do you want from a book? 📚

Finished reading: The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. Dirty, but not dark. Cynical, but leavened with hard work. Clichés and anti-clichés. Excellent, not stereotypical fantasy. 📚

Finished reading: Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson. Fun as usual; kind of a fantasy/mystery/romance. I didn’t love the storytelling device, but the story itself, the world, and the magic were all top-notch Sanderson. 📚

Finished reading: Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree. Spectacular, sweet fairy tale in fantasy clothing. Deserves its accolades. Highly recommended. 📚

Finished reading: The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi. Fun, quick romp through a particular many-worlds hypothesis. A little too cute in places, and far too embedded in the real-world time (including soon-to-be-obscure Trump jokes), but a very enjoyable read. 📚

I’ve lived in San Antonio for twelve years, and today I got my first library card.

(I’ve read dozens of books on Libby over the years with what was apparently a “temporary” card, and I finally had to go get a real one to keep reading.) 📚

Finished reading: Thirty Questions by Timothy C. Tennent. Structured like a catechism but with answers far too long to memorize. Not a bad introduction to Christian doctrine, but fits better as a study: Tennent clearly expects you to do some of the work on your own. Fortunately, he gives chapter-and-verse starting points. 📚

Finished reading: The One Hour Bible by SPCK. Edited by Philip Law. A great idea—not paraphrasing or summarizing but eliding: using the actual words of the New Living Translation to tell the story of God in fewer words.

Unfortunately, while this treatment works well for the Old Testament and most of the Gospels, they abridge Acts too much, and the rest of the New Testament disappears until Revelation 22. I know it doesn’t fit the format, but ironically one of the elided verses (2 Timothy 3:16) says, “all Scripture is useful.” 📚

Finished reading: For the Body by Timothy C. Tennent. A critical exposition of the need for the modern church to develop and espouse a positive theology of the body rather than the decades of pure negative theology: “don’t do that; that’s wrong.”

A great starter book on the topic, although the last two chapters are aimed squarely at pastors, not laypeople (they still have value, but not as much).

My primary takeaway is that developing a positive, holistic theology of the body allows us to see our sexuality, our bodies, and ourselves in the context of the complete gospel, not by the light of a few specific verses that mostly just make people angry regardless of what they believe. 📚

Finished reading: Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft. Tremendously dissatisfying. A chaotic run through a fascinating world, but the plot was so contrived to prevent progress as to frustrate me with every page turn.

Not recommended. If you want a weird world, go read Piranesi instead. 📚

Finished reading: The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. Slow start for an amazing ending. Fun wordplay and enough mystery to hunt down the sequel. 📚

Finished reading: The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson. A fun, quick read. Pretty un-Sanderson. Seems like he was experimenting with style, similar to Tress, just not in the Cosmere. 📚

Finished reading: Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett. Like “Pyramids”, an excuse for Pratchett to make a billion pop culture jokes in a row. Tons of fun. 📚

Finished reading: Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. Wow, what a fun novel. I had no idea what was going on or what was going to happen. Definitely better than her Uprooted. Thanks to @jsonbecker for saying exactly that and giving me the recommendation. 📚

Finished reading: The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss. I’ve never read a book so full of hints but so devoid of answers. Also with such a powerful, but dumb, protagonist. I want Denna’s story so badly… which I guess puts me in good company. A book practically made for Reddit. 📚

Finished reading: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Late to the party on this one. One of the most beautiful fantasy books I’ve ever read. Incredible command of language and myth and character. Also frustrating; I knew that going in, but I didn’t know just quite how. 📚

Finished reading: Eric by Terry Pratchett. Just fun. Less effort than previous books, but more entertaining. Plus: Rincewind! Only problem is it’s very very short. 📚

Finished reading: League of Dragons by Naomi Novik. Probably my favorite of these, which is nice because it’s last. Pacing worked out, some growth arcs concluded, and the inevitable future is hinted but not written. 📚

Finished reading: Blood of Tyrants by Naomi Novik. I will never get used to the pacing of these books; and especially the ridiculously abrupt endings. Not even cliffhangers, just endings. 📚

Finished reading: Crucible of Gold by Naomi Novik. Fantastic adventure in the Andes devolves to more boring British politics by the end. Novik loves the history of the Napoleonic wars too much, and it weakens the stories. 📚

Finished reading: Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik. Unexpectedly appropriate for my long layover in Sydney. I like Laurence better as an explorer than soldier. More adventure, less British politics. 📚

Finished reading: Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik. Pacing finally feels good, and as a result I enjoyed this one more than the previous four. Feels like the world is changing, which is fun to watch. 📚

Finished reading: Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson. Tremendous effort and tons of fun. Lots of Cosmere elements together, and the joy of Hoid everywhere. I just wish he hadn’t tried so hard to sound like Terry Pratchett. (Recommended by @manton) 📚

Finished reading: Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett. Probably my least favorite of the series so far. So many moving parts, and the jokes didn’t land for me. 📚

Finished reading: The Lost Metal by Brandon Sanderson. I absolutely tore through this book. As usual, Sanderson’s organization awes me, although I couldn’t help but feel he tossed a little too much Cosmere lore at us in one book to prepare us for what’s coming. 📚

Finished reading: Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik. More like a log of adventure than a novel. Temeraire and Laurence finally have a hard decision to make, although their expressed value system removes the tension entirely for the reader. Still a fun adventure though. 📚

Finished reading: Black Powder War by Naomi Novik 📚

Finished reading: Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik. Seemingly totally independent from the first novel except the characters, another exploration into a world where dragons are rare but natural. The pacing is again weird, but the world entertaining enough to make up for it. 📚

Finished reading: His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik. Learning a new world is always fun, and Novik launches in as if England and France have always used dragon fleets in their wars. The climax is too long in coming though, and too short; similarly, the denouement is precipitous. 📚

Finished reading: The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden 📚

Finished reading: Pyramids by Terry Pratchett. Long train rides make these books fly by. Another one, like Wyrd Sisters, where Pratchett clearly enjoyed himself with puns and satire and camels. 📚

Finished reading: Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett. The first Discworld novel that actually made me laugh out loud. The Discworld is the same glorious place, but the words—powerful things—tickled me just right. I suspect I missed a lot more literature references than I got. 📚

Finished reading: The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden. Takes a long time to get going, but spellbinding once there. Another winter fairy tale. Recommended by @hollyhoneychurch as a follow-up to Uprooted; good recommendation. 📚

Finished reading: Sourcery by Terry Pratchett. The self-consistency of Discworld, despite the total lack of logic, amazes me every time. All of its legends and myths and prophecies are true, just never in ways the reader expects, yet somehow always in ways that blend comfortably with the overall chaos. 📚

Finished reading: Mort by Terry Pratchett. Death hires an apprentice so he can take some time off and experience life, and maybe find a husband for his daughter. All of those things happen, but as is common on Discworld, not exactly in the expected fashion. Rincewind cameo. 📚

Finished reading: Uprooted by Naomi Novik. Starts as a twist on a fairy tale, ends as high fantasy. The finale is a bit more chaotic than you’d wish, but the whole thing is a good time. 95% for children, but very much meant for grown-ups. 📚

Finished reading: The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik. I absolutely devoured this book. It pays off the first book’s cliffhanger better than the second even tried to, and while the writing got a little cheaper the story exploded into awesome. 📚

Finished reading: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik. More fun in the Scholomance. Cliffhanger from the previous novel doesn’t pay off, but a great read anyway. 📚

Finished reading: A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik. Clearly written for the Harry Potter set, but profoundly different and exciting and, helpfully, well-written. Immediately a favorite young adult novel. 📚

Finished reading: The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson. Concludes as expected, a surprisingly similar scene to Hero of Ages. I wish we’d seen Hoid more, but the tease of Kelsier at the end was worth it.📚

Finished reading: Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson. Beautiful, tragic, ending. Harsh cliffhanger, but didn’t leave me desperate for more Cosmere like most of this series does. 📚

Finished reading: Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett. As fine a primer on headology as one could hope for. 📚

Finished reading: The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett 📚

Finished reading: The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett 📚