books on Cliff538

Finished reading: The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown 📚

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 17:54:54 -0700

Finished reading: The Boys in the Boat Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown 📚

Another outstanding book by Daniel James Brown; the man can write. I know I’m late to the party on this one, but after reading The Indifferent Stars Above, I knew I had to read more by Mr. Brown.

You probably know the story from either the PBS documentary or the movie, but if you haven’t read the book, you need to.

The detail and backstory of the main characters are a story unto themselves. These kids grew up in a very different time, during very difficult times. The author goes deep into the backstory of several of the rowers, coaches, and shell makers, and it’s worth your time. The backstory of these rowers matters and goes a long way toward understanding why they worked so hard and who they were. Your heart will break, and your eyes will tear up as you hear Joe’s story. It’s just amazing what he went through growing up and just to stay in college.

It was the fourth year of the Great Depression. One in four working Americans—ten million people—had no job and no prospects of finding one, and only a quarter of them were receiving any kind of relief.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 million tons of American topsoil had become airborne in that single storm. The New York Times proclaimed it “the greatest dust storm in United States history.” But in fact the greater storms, and the greater suffering, were still months ahead.

You will learn about rowing, shell building, and what it was like to survive during the Depression and the Dust Bowl.

Western red cedar (Thuja plicata) is a kind of wonder wood. Its low density makes it easy to shape, whether with a chisel, a plane, or a handsaw. Its open cell structure makes it light and buoyant, and in rowing lightness means speed. Its tight, even grain makes it strong but flexible, easy to bend yet disinclined to twist, warp, or cup. It is free of pitch or sap, but its fibers contain chemicals called thujaplicins that act as natural preservatives, making it highly resistant to rot while at the same time lending it its lovely scent. It is beautiful to look at, it takes a finish well, and it can be polished to a high degree of luster, essential for providing the smooth, friction-free racing bottom a good shell requires.

You will learn about how popular rowing was during this time and the rivalry between West Coast and East Coast.

In the 1920s and 1930s, collegiate crew was wildly popular, often ranking right up there with baseball and collegiate football in the amount of press it received and the crowds it drew.

For days, department stores, electrical appliance stores, the Sherman Clay piano store, even the jewelry store Weisfield & Goldberg had been doing a land-office business selling new Philco 61F Olympic Special cabinet radios. Despite the $49.95 price tag, Seattleites had been snatching them up. Each came with a shortwave tuner and a special “high-efficiency aerial” kit to ensure clear reception of both the standard radio broadcast on NBC and shortwave broadcasts in a variety of languages direct from Berlin.

My highest recommendation for this book; it was a pleasure to read. I looked forward to my next chance to read it every day, and I found myself not wanting to read it as I neared the end so it wouldn’t end.

Custom Book Pages in Micro.blog

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 16:31:27 -0700

Spent the afternoon sorting out the custom book pages and how I want to use it. Still mulling things over, but for now, you can check out the Library of Book Reviews Page. This page includes only books I’ve reviewed. Clicking each book cover brings you to the custom book page with all my posts and/or reviews.

Then the Reading Page has all the books I’ve read, but it still links book covers to the custom book page for any book I’ve reviewed or talked about. If I haven’t reviewed a book, it defaults to the traditional MB book page.

I’m happy with it so far; it’s a great feature MB has let us use and customize.

If you have any suggestions or feedback, please let me know.

Cheers.

Finished reading: Train Dreams by Denis Johnson 📚

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 08:47:22 -0700

Finished reading: Train Dreams by Denis Johnson 📚

It’s slow-paced, sad, and atmospheric. Every page has a sentence that stops you, makes you reread it, highlight it, or look away from the page to ponder and let your mind build the scene and absorb the meaning. A really gifted writer. Time is compressed in this Novella that covers the protagonist’s full life. Yet you don’t feel shortchanged; you don’t want more. You have walked alongside Robert Grainier; you understand him in a way a friend would. When this short story ends, you are left to dwell on the meaning, if there is one, and wish Robert all the peace in the world.

It feels like every word counts. Nothing extra, just beautiful minimal prose that tells a story of a man’s life. I really enjoyed this book and give it 5 stars, but I can also see how it’s not for everyone. I looked at the average rating on StoryGraph, and it’s 3.8 compared to my solid 5.

This was my first book by Denis Johnson, and I will be reading more of him. I have already added books to the queue: Seek, Jesus’ Son, and Tree of Smoke.

Finished reading: The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown 📚

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 19:08:54 -0700

Finished reading: The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown 📚

This was an outstanding book, well written with lots of history and side stories. I don’t give out five-star reviews very easily, but this earns its place.

And they had nailed the boards above her face,
The peasants of that land,
Wondering to lay her in that solitude,
And raised above her mound
A cross they had made out of two bits of wood,
And planted cypress round;
And left her to the indifferent stars above.
~W. B. YEATS, “A Dream of Death”

The author closely follows Sarah Graves and her family on their trek to California. You’ll find lots of history and detail you may not get in other books on the Donner Party. The story really comes alive as you follow the Graves and their companions into the misery to come.

The book includes enough detail and deep dives into how people in the 1846 - 1847 timeframe thought and what they believed to make you feel like you were trekking with them.

This was the first book I read at night, and because we were traveling and my wife wanted to hear the story, we listened to the audiobook version during our drive. I really enjoyed reading and then listening to what I read the next day. I would always miss something in my reading, and listening to the audio version made it clearer or brought it out in a new light as we discussed the story together.

You become very aware that people today and people in 1846 were very different in knowledge, but mostly in toughness and tenacity. I would bet that people today, put in their situation, would fare far worse.

One by one, feathery flakes landed on cold blankets and buffalo robes, on sweat-slicked hair, on shoulders turned to the sky, on soft cheeks—each flake delicate and slight, but each lending its almost imperceptible weight to the horror of what was about to happen.

If there is one thing I could nitpick, it would be that the stories of how they dealt with the local tribes are always one-sided. The Indians' perspective is never discussed.

I learned a lot from this book and will be diving deeper into this time period of history. Even days after I’ve finished the book, it stays on my mind. Thinking about the mistakes made, the horrors, the loss, the recovery. I think everyone should read this book or any book on the Donner Party. It brings perspective. It shows how far we have come in our society, science, and technology. And it ultimately brings hope that even after horrific accidents, you can still live and love.

THE MEAGER BY THE MEAGER WERE DEVOURED
All earth was but one thought—and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meager by the meager were devoured.
—Lord Byron, “DARKNESS”

Finished reading: Tambora by Gillen D'Arcy Wood 📚

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 18:49:02 -0700

Finished reading: Tambora by Gillen D’Arcy Wood 📚

I can’t recommend this book to the casual reader, but if you read Krakatoa and enjoyed it, and you are a history buff who wants to understand the effects of the Tambora volcanic eruption which was far worse than the better-known 1883 explosion of Krakatoa you will enjoy this book.

The worldwide effects of Tambora are hard to believe. The worldwide hunger and disease this eruption caused are mind-numbing to read about. Along with climate change, nuclear war, and fascism, you can add to your fears a major volcanic eruption that can slowly end life as we know it.

Book Quotes

For three years following Tambora’s explosion, to be alive, almost anywhere in the world, meant to be hungry.

This giant volcanic sinkhole is among the largest to have formed on Earth since the retreat of the last glacial period around twelve thousand years ago and is comparable in size to the volcanic Crater Lake in Oregon, formed seven thousand years ago.

It is important to remember that the misery of the Tambora period in Europe—years of famine, disease, and homelessness—was borne overwhelmingly by the poor, who left scant record of their sufferings.

In terms of sheer numbers of victims, louse-borne typhus has not only been decisive in the outcome of major military conflicts during the last five hundred years, it has in that time “killed more people than all conflicts combined.”

Despite the impression of Olympian serenity he presented to visitors, Jefferson experienced the Tambora-driven economic crisis of those post-1816 years in a sickening spiral of indebtedness that culminated in the great personal humiliation of his old age: the mortgaging of his beloved Monticello.

The eruption of Tambora was thus responsible for far more than a single summerless year in New England. By precipitating violent short-term fluctuations in the price of grain in the transatlantic region, the Tamboran weather of 1815–18 was a primary cause of the United States’ first major economic depression.

Tambora’s history, then, like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, ultimately tells a cautionary tale. Both warn against the technological hubris of our modernity through figures of intense and widespread suffering. “All men hate the wretched,” laments the Creature, Shelley’s literary projection of the homeless, starving poor of Europe in Tambora’s aftermath. Two centuries on, the global ranks of the wretched are set to increase exponentially in coming decades at the hands of our own climate “Frankenstein,” a monster who feeds on carbon waste and grows more violent by the year. Failure to draw down the carbon emissions and rampant deforestation that drive climate change brings us ever closer to the traumatized world of 1815–18 writ large.

Finished reading: The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster 📚

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 18:55:13 -0700

Finished reading: The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster 📚

Dark, strange, mysterious, interconnected, very unsatisfying endings. Three interconnected stories, excellent writing. Some of it doesn’t make sense or cohere. A lot is left to the imagination.

After a break, I’ll come back to Paul Auster and try another book. Auster’s writing and storytelling are excellent, but I don’t think I can recommend The New York Trilogy. Although I slogged through, always wanting to find out what happened, the ending was very unsatisfying.

Update to Calibre-Web: Worth it?

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 19:52:01 -0700

Out on the road, I’ve had time to fully investigate my Calibre-Web setup. I wrote a short post about it, but this is an update on using it and whether it’s worth the setup time.

You launch it, of course, via a web browser. I use TailScale to access mine to keep it secure. It has a nice layout with several options for how you want to sort your books. At the top, I have a Random Books section, which is a nice feature that shows you four random books from your collection. I have to admit, I see books that I don’t remember getting. Which is kind of cool; it’s almost like looking at your own personal indie bookstore.

You click on a book, and you can see the metadata, rating, description, and whether you’ve read it or not. All things that you download through Calibre when you import your books. There is an in-app book reader which opens a new tab and allows you very minimal options to read the book. I would never use this; it’s very bare in layout options and, critically, has no scrolling option. Most importantly you can download the books in whatever format you originally set up in Calibre; epub, PDF, etc. If you are an Apple user, that download will open up in Apple Books, which is a pretty good eReader. I don’t read many books in it, but I don’t mind it.

Overall, I’m glad I set it up. I have my whole personal digital book library with me at all times; I can download and read any book or just browse the collection looking for a lost book or my next read. Nowhere as nice as looking at a bookcase of actual books, but for your digital collection this is a very nice option. I can highly recommend it if you have a large ebook collection.

One thing I haven’t tested yet is emailing books to your ebook reader. I don’t use an ebook reader but would like to get one and give it a go.

Finished reading: Every Day I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books by Hwang Bo-Reum 📚

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 08:21:19 -0700

Finished reading: Every Day I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books by Hwang Bo-Reum 📚

This is a quick read: 53 short meditations on reading. If you are an avid reader, you will not find much new here, but it’s still nice to read about reading and how a fellow avid reader feels about books. This one gave me some new book ideas and made me think about going deeper with my reading.

Hwang reads a lot. Like, as many books in a month as I do in a year. It almost gave me permission, or gave me solace, in knowing that it’s ok to read more or as much as you can. Funny that I need that, but I guess I did. I do have a to-read pile that is growing every month, and I truly want to read them all, and the only way that will happen is to read more.

I love books, and clearly I like reading about reading books. In my life, I don’t have any friends who are avid readers, so it’s powerful for me to read about someone who is and how they approach books. I wish more power readers would post more about how and why they read, and the importance of reading in their lives. Reading books by any standard you see online is regressing, and we need to reverse that trend. At the very least, children need exposure to lots of books and the power and joy of reading.

Here’s to reading!

I read every day. Because I’m bored, because I crave a story, because I feel a little empty. I read to understand what my friends are going through, to breathe some hope into life. But most importantly, I read because I love it. Every day I read, and I’ll keep reading.

Sometimes a single sentence is more powerful than a whole book.

Jean Grenier, in La vie quotidienne, says that books are like a guide in life. Books are friends we make along life’s journey. And as the French political philosopher Charles de Montesquieu says, ‘I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve.’ I want to remember the book that has healed me today.

Finished reading: Biological War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen 📚

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 19:37:19 -0700

Finished reading: Biological War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen 📚

Sobering. Frightening. A very informative book that I think everyone should read. We all need to understand where the world is at in reference to biological warfare.

The details of how a biological war would be handled were fascinating. The government protocols and procedures were very interesting to read about. The chaos of civilian life seemed realistic to me. Basically, the government saves a small group of people, and everyone else is left to die. There is not enough medicine to go around, and no one to administer it.

The epilogue had even scarier information about where biological weapons sit today. They have engineered trap doors into them now. You start taking antibiotics to cure the first disease and that triggers another disease. It’s a death sentence. We basically have no chance.

Why would humans make these things?

What began in Colorado with one person naturally infected with Mother Nature’s pneumonic plague led to eighty-eight people needing antibiotics, according to the CDC. Which brings us to a true horror undergirding this story. Even if the coming pneumonic plague epidemic can be treated with broad-spectrum antibiotics, there will not be enough antibiotics in the United States to go around.

The federal workforce is in disarray. Employees without a need to know have no idea that Devolution is happening. Those cleared for Devolution have disabled their cell phones so no one tracks their movements. So no one learns they’ve been chosen to live, while millions will be left to die.

The United States does not have a vaccine for plague, for reasons that are complicated.

Calibre-Web

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 17:44:52 -0700

I’ve been a Calibre user for years now. It’s great for managing your ebook collection. It has tons of advanced functions that I don’t use, but the ability to back up your collection, add metadata, and book covers is perfect for my use. But I’ve never dabbled with Calibre-Web and finally got it installed on my Mac mini home server.

Calibre is only on my office computer and I don’t even open it much unless I need to add new books. A few times on the road, I remember a book and want to look at it, but I don’t have access. Calibre-Web takes care of that scenario.

I can now view, read, or download any of my 1400+ ebooks. I’m not sure I’ll use it much, but since I travel every week, it’s nice to have access to all my ebooks. Now, when I want to browse my collection, find that book I just remembered, and download it, I can.

So far, it’s working perfectly. While on vacation this year, I’ll access it and play around with it a bit. If I find any issues, I’ll update this post.

Here’s to good books!

Finished reading: Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan 📚

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 16:46:44 -0700

Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan 📚

This was Claire’s second collection of short stories, following Antarctica. Seven stories in all (in this edition that I read, some say there can be eight). I liked five of them and loved two. Worth buying the book just for the two alone.

I couldn’t read the book straight through. Some of these stories need to sit with you for a while, worthy of a good mulling. Her writing brings the people and these environments to life. They make you think. For me, she’s a powerful storyteller. Even days after I’ve finished the book, I’m still thinking about it.

If you are new to Keegan, read Foster and Small Things Like These first. I am in awe of how she writes; you are immersed in the scene so quickly. She and Maria Popova are two of my favorite writers.

Highly recommend.

It’s what she once wanted but two people hardly ever want the same thing at any given point in life. It is sometimes the hardest part of being human.

Deegan is now middle-aged. If it is a stage when some believe that much of life is over, and assume that what’s left is a downhill slope to be lived within the restraints of choices made[…]

Always a part of her craves the solitude that will let her mind calm down and her memory surface.

Now she sometimes imagined where she’d be, what she might be doing if she had not made her presence known. She was constantly afraid to take the smallest step in any direction. The greatest lesson the priest had taught her was the lesson of where one step can lead.

He’s a lonely man, she thought, and he’s desperate. But that goat! She’d have no time for that goat, sitting up like a witch in the dark.

📚 Great British Bake Off - Of Books

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:37:49 -0700

Wry Writer wrote on her blog about the Great British Bake Off Book Challenge.

Here is mine.

ON YOUR MARKS – A Book You Can’t Wait To Read

Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel. I’m a huge fan of her books and am really looking forward to this one. Comes out September 15, 2026.

SIGNATURE BAKE – A Book From Your Favourite Genre

I love survival stories. There are many great books out there, but the most recent one for me was 117 Days Adrift by Maurice and Maralyn Bailey. Another great one is Left for Dead by Eric Jay Dolin.

SHOWSTOPPER – A Book With A Beautiful Cover

I love the outdoors and hiking; I found this cover beautiful and creative. A Walk in the Park by Kevin Fedarko.

SOGGY BOTTOM – A Book That Made You Cry

Oof. Lots of books make me cry, but this one was so powerful, raw, and full of hope that I cried many times while reading it. When Breath Becomes air by Paul Kalanithi.

HOLLYWOOD HANDSHAKE – Your Perfect Book

My perfect book is hard to nail down. All books are beautiful and perfect for different reasons, but mine would include animals, the outdoors, kind humans, and some history. That about describes Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton for me. I just loved the book. So, it’s a double entry on this list for me.

LEAVING THIS WEEK – A Book You Didn’t Finish

Always remember the words of Doris Lessing:

” There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag – and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty- and vice versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you. " ~ Doris Lessing

Don’t be afraid to stop reading a book. It may not be your time.

I’ve stopped many books, and you should too. Dive deep into new genres and try reading a book that doesn’t even look good to you. Explore. You may just be surprised by what you find.

Three recent books I DNF.

Dominion by Matthew Scully

Dominion by Tom Holland.

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.

STAR BAKER – A Five Star Read

Last years 5 star read was hands down Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton. Another one that everyone should read is Foster by Claire Keegan.

AND THE WINNER IS – A Book By A Favourite Author

A hands-down favorite author is Maria Popova. I love how she writes. Her latest book, Traversal, was outstanding.

And you, Avid Reader, what would make it into your Great British Bake Off list?

Finished reading: Passing of the Dragon by Ken Liu 📚

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 16:43:29 -0700

Finished reading: Passing of the Dragon by Ken Liu 📚

A wonderful short story about a woman who fears she’s failing as a painter and as an artist seeks inspiration from one of her favorite poets, finding something even more wondrous, but also more impossible to capture in her art.

A worthy read-in-one-sitting story.

Finished reading: A World Appears by Michael Pollan 📚

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 16:07:05 -0700

Finished reading: A World Appears by Michael Pollan 📚

My Thoughts

What can I say, any book by Michael Pollan is sure to be gold, and this one does not disappoint. If you have any interest at all, or even if you don’t, you’ll understand what all this hubbub about consciousness is.

Michael dives deep into all the dusty corners and talks to all the current experts to explain, as best he can, what this is all about and why we still don’t know that much. Well, we know a lot. We just don’t know what it is or where it comes from.

Michael says it best:

When I confessed to Koch my fear—that after my five-year journey into the nature and workings of consciousness, I somehow knew less than I did when I started—he simply smiled. “But that’s good!” he said. “That’s progress!”

The book is outstanding; I highly recommend you read it. You’ll find yourself thinking a lot about who you are and why you are. You’ll think about your thoughts and wonder where they come from. You’ll wonder what makes you, you, and how fragile “you” really is. You’ll think about the thinker, are you the thinker of your thoughts…

Quotes

Remarkably, plants can be rendered “unconscious” by the same anesthetics that put animals out. This whole class of drugs, which is notably varied in its chemistry, induces a state of unresponsiveness in plants.

(When asked if he thought plants were conscious, the late ethnobotanist Timothy Plowman replied with some exasperation: “They can eat light, isn’t that enough?”) What good would consciousness do them? It seems to me that something different—more minimal, stripped down—might describe them better, something more like intelligence or sentience. But most of the plant neurobiologists are sticking with consciousness.

There’s a parable here: Cell biologists typically study dead cells, and because DNA survives the death of cells, it got all the attention—more than it deserved, in Levin’s view. Conversely, because bioelectricity vanishes at the moment of death, it was largely ignored. “Kill the cells and you can see the hardware,” Levin said, “but you’ll miss the software.”

I was reminded of the ayahuasqueros, the shamans of the Amazon Basin, who will tell you, when asked about the source of their astonishing ethnobotanical knowledge (including the not-at-all-obvious recipe for combining two plant species to make ayahuasca), that the plants, through dreams and visions, teach them what to do.

The chameleon vine (Boquila trifoliolata) changes its leaf shape to mimic the plant it climbs on, even when that plant is plastic. This indicates it has some way of “seeing” the host plant’s leaves.

“I worry quite a lot these days that people might think I’m crazy,” he said, “so I say this to you very cautiously. We are all living in a simulated environment, in a manner of speaking, all the time. You and I are not seeing one another now—I’m seeing this screen where there is a representation of you. But it goes even deeper than that. I’m receiving light from this screen that is being transduced from my rods and cones into nerve impulses, and from these spike trains, I create this image. It’s an image in me of you. So that, too, is a simulation.

“Be wary of the desire for magic.”

Here was a tidy restatement of the “hard problem” as framed by David Chalmers in the 1990s. Why don’t all the many mental operations that our brains perform go on “in the dark”? In fact, most mental operations do. Our brains are minding our bodies twenty-four seven, taking in and processing tremendous amounts of information, both external and internal, without any of it crossing the threshold of our awareness. And yet as long as we are awake, there is an ever-present feeling—a something-it-is-like to be us, alive.

“The first dose was the most profound experience of my life. I disappeared, fell out of time, and then came back with the realization that everything in the world is love. I know, ridiculous! As a scientist, there’s no reasoning about it. But I understood for the first time that everything is connected by the same substance, and that substance is love. “Afterward, I was overflowing with love. For every person on the street!

Couldn’t there be, somewhere out there in the space of all possibilities, some idea about the fundamental nature of reality and consciousness that the human mind hasn’t conceived of yet? We can hope so. But how will we ever know if that new idea—which will itself be the product of consciousness—is true? Because consciousness is the only means we have of knowing anything, we can’t step outside it and take up a godlike perspective from which to render a final judgment. So where does that leave us? Exactly where we already were: wandering in the exitless labyrinth of consciousness.

Iain McGilchrist, a Scottish psychiatrist and philosopher, is a proponent of the idea—first proposed by Henri Bergson—that the brain is a receiver rather than an originator of consciousness. “I know of no way of proving the point one way or the other,” he writes, “since the observable facts look the same whether [the brain] gave rise to, or simply mediated, consciousness.”

“You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives,” the filmmaker Luis Buñuel wrote late in life. Memory plays a crucial role in the construction of a self; indeed, it is the essential raw material from which selves are made. “Life without memory is no life at all,” Buñuel writes. “Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.”

“The Buddhists were right about this, that getting attached to any goal in the world, like career success or sensory pleasure, is an attempt to create stability. But the world being as it is, and systems like us being as they are, we will always be frustrated,” he said, because control—whether of the world or even of our own selves—is ultimately futile. “The nasty thing is that evolution has developed this mechanism”—the self—“to drive us forward mercilessly.” We helplessly strive to control the uncontrollable.

Always keep a don’t-know mind,” Roshi Joan had said to me. Sometimes not-knowing opens us to possibilities that knowing, or trying to know, or thinking we already know, closes off.

And let go into not-knowing. My time in the cave had shown me another way to look at consciousness: less as a scientific or philosophical puzzle to be solved and more as a practice, a way to once again be altogether here, present to life and to this vault of stars. That, I guess, is the prize won on this quest, in place of the definitive theory or clinching argument I had once, naively, hoped to bring back from it. Consciousness is a miracle, truly, and remains the deepest of mysteries, yes, but it is also so very simple it can fit into a sentence. I open my eyes and a world appears.

Want to read: Everything Is Photograph by Patricia Albers 📚

Wed, 13 May 2026 16:08:26 -0700

Want to read: Everything Is Photograph by Patricia Albers 📚

I don’t usually post about books in the queue, but I just found this one, and wanted any other photographers interested to see it. Kertész took over 100,000 photographs, exhibited worldwide, and was the first major photographer to embrace the Leica.

From the Kobo Synopsis:

The first full biography of the innovative “father of modern photography” vividly depicts his life and works, from Hungary to France and America, across the 20th century. Born in Budapest in 1894, André Kertész soared to star status in Jazz Age Paris, tumbled into poverty and obscurity in wartime New York, slogged through 15 years shooting for House & Garden, then improbably reemerged into the spotlight with a 1964 retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. By the time of his death in 1985, he had exhibited around the world, taken more than 100,000 images, and steered the medium in new and vital directions: He was the first major photographer to embrace the Leica, the camera now mythically linked to street photography, and he pioneered subjective photojournalism, publishing what is arguably the world’s first great photo essay. Drawing on dozens of interviews, previous scholarship, and deep archival research, and interrogating the images themselves, Patricia Albers retrieves aspects of Kertész’s life that he and his pictures gloss over, among them the ordeals of trench warfare, the impact of the Holocaust, and the tale of his tangled romances. She takes Kertész from the Eastern front in World War I to the Paris of Piet Mondrian, Colette, Alexander Calder, and a lively central European diaspora. From Condé Nast’s postwar media empire to the “photo boom” of the 1970s. She revisits Kertész’s relationships with other photographers, among them his “frenemy” Brassaï and protégé Robert Capa. She breathes life into a gentle, generous, and unassuming man endowed with Old-World charm but also sputtering with grievance and rage and inclined to indulge in deception. Everything Is Photograph immerses readers in the heyday of a now lost version of photography. Formally vigorous, emotionally rich, and aesthetically charged, Kertész’s images speak of the medium as a tool for human connection, self-narration, self-invention, and inquiry about the world, even as they project its mysteries.

Finished reading: So Late in the Day Stories of Women and Men by Claire Keegan 📚

Wed, 13 May 2026 13:48:15 -0700

Finished reading: So Late in the Day Stories of Women and Men by Claire Keegan 📚

Beautiful short stories. These stories leave a lot to your imagination. They are certainly different than her other work. I liked them, but of all her books, it was my least favorite.

Not a lot to say on this one. If you’ve never read Claire Keegan, you are missing out. Get reading.

I would say start out with Foster and Small Things Like These, first, then move on to her other work.

Finished reading: Go Computer Now! by Ben Zotto 📚

Wed, 13 May 2026 13:23:19 -0700

Finished reading: Go Computer Now! by Ben Zotto 📚

Delightful book about the start of the personal computer, and Sphere Corporation, arguably the first company to ship a personal computer, beating all others to the punch, but quickly failing and being forgotten in history until Ben Zotto finds a box of old computer parts on the sidewalk.

Such a wonderful time in computer history. The story about the life and death of Sphere and its brushes with greatness. Bill Gates, Woz, Radio Shack, Apple, IBM, and others are in this story. I love the early history and how the personal computer came to be. And the start of personal Software, small-business accounting, and word processors that people could only dream about began to take shape. These programs were shipped on punch tape or cassette tape until floppy disks came along.

This is the first book I’ve read on the early rise of the personal computer. I’ll be exploring other books about the time frame now. There are a lot of twists and turns as folks battle to be the first.

Some interesting tidbits are:

In the 1960’s, software programs could cost $30,000, and a word processing program in the 1970’s dropped to $5,000 with the rise of personal computers.
I started computing with floppies and knew about reel-to-reel tape, but did not realize that early programs came on cassette tapes. And boy, were there a lot of problems with those, not to mention getting them to work with your computer, you had to be a hobbiest electrical engineer.
1975 brings the first software distributor. Mel Norell with Programma.
Just the story alone of the BASIC programming language is fascinating. Without that on your personal computer, you were extremely limited in what you could do with it.

The author Ben Zotto has a wonderful website and Sphere Emulator that you can use to see how primitive the early computers were. Remember, this thing was cutting-edge at the time. If you really want the full experience, you can purchase a module.

You can purchase the book here. Current news and subscribing to the newsletter here. Ben is still finding parts and talking to ex-users.

Highly Recommend!

The Good Stuff - April 2026

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 15:59:18 -0700

A smattering of useful things I’ve come across this month

April 2026

Adventure Journal - The best outdoor magazine I’ve ever subscribed to. Great blog as well.
Bad Astronomy - One of the best Astronomy newsletters I’ve found. I read every issue.
Kurt Vonnegut’s Advice for Making the Most of Your Day - InsideHook - A short story that will make you smile about Kurt Vonnegut and his technology stack.
Something is Going on with Colorectal Cancer - Hank Green out with more great informaiton.
Guide to the Best Beginner Brush Pens - Someday I’ll get to messing about with brush pens.
Pinery - Self-Publishing App - Hiro had this in his report, and it looks great. Even though I didn’t need it, it was fun to explore. I do have a book I started 30 years ago about being a young pilot in the Alaska Arctic… just say’n.
Longreads - If you don’t know about Longreads, you need to check it out. Wonderful stories, very well curated.
Notebook - iA - I had to get one or two of these, just beautifully made. I’m not sure I’ll bring myself to write in it though… still working on that.
The Making of iA Notebook - YouTube - Watch the craftsmanship involved with this notebook.

Books added to the queue

Thirst - by Heather Anderson, I also added her latest forthcoming Farther.
So Late In The Day - Claire Keegan. If you haven’t read anything by Keegan, do yourself a favor and start one of her books.
The Year Without Summer - William K. Klingaman and Nicholas P. Klingaman. I was sent down this rabbit hole by Maria Popova’s book Traversal. I loved Simon Winchester’s book Krakatoa so I’m excited to get to this one. We are very fragile creatures on a very active planet.
Go Computer Now ! - I’m about halfway through this and I love it. Very well written and brings a whole new company and characters to light in the early days of the personal computer. The story brings in the usual characters, Bill Gates, Woz, etc but only for context in this story about Sphere Corporation. If you want to know more about the battle to bring the personal computer to the masses, you’ll really enjoy this.

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:58:12 -0700

Currently reading: Go Computer Now! by Ben Zotto 📚

About halfway through, what a great book. Tons of history that I knew nothing about.

shop.gocomputernow.com/products/…

Finished reading: Traversal by Maria Popova 📚

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 18:13:56 -0700

Traversal by Maria Popova 📚

How do you get from Captain Cook’s 1769 voyage to document the transit of Venus to Mary Shelley’s parents, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and their books Vindication and An Enquiry Concerning the Nature of Political Justice; to Margaret Fuller in America; to frog legs; to Aaron Burr as a destitute boarder; to the world’s first chemical equation–“grape must = carbonic acid + alcohol”; to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror; to Jane Marcet; to Michael Faraday; Ralph Wedgwood, the inventor of the noctograph; to the catastrophic eruption of Mount Tambora and its devastating global weather effects; to a doctor who wrote the first vampire-themed book, then later took his own life after being unable to convince the public of his true authorship; to phrenology; to Walt Whitman and his lost true love; to Henry David Thoreau, Fanny Wright, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Frederick Douglass?

Maria Popova, that’s how.

Maria tells a story drawn from the ages, across time and space, bringing lives together in stories of love, cruelty, and devotion. She traces the butterfly effects of historic and mundane world events that brought forth inventions and prose that have endured the centuries, and humans at their best and worst.

Because of societal norms, powerful love stories built on mutual respect and equality were almost unheard of at the time, but are celebrated in beautiful detail.

She tells the stories of history, but deeply intertwines the relationships beneath them, following a trail of connections across space and time.

I’m struck by the magnitude of what we have lost in our knowledge and our sensibilities, and by the limitations placed on women throughout history.

Over and over in the book, Maria highlights the ways women were not allowed, were taken from, removed, suppressed, discouraged, and ignored.

Where would we be if, throughout history, women’s ideas had carried the same force and power as men’s, instead of the tiny fraction they have been allowed? Men and religion have a great deal to answer for.

She takes you beyond the veneer, beyond the quick reputational one-liners of people you think you know, but don’t.

Mostly, I think Maria writes about love — the power of love. You can feel that she writes about it as something she feels deeply and understands on a profoundly human level.

Maria says:

We mistake so many things for love: loyalty, sympathy, pity, desire but somewhere in the marrow of our being, we know what love is and long for that house of belonging: the whole of who we are, or at least enough of who we are, at home in enough of the other. Enough may be love’s other name, life’s only vindication the hardest concept for the human animal to grasp.

Maria puts felt love into words better than anybody I have ever read.

Every page has pockets of beauty, and Maria understands the hearts of imperfect people. Humans are complex, capable of cruelty and self-centeredness, but also of love. Maria tells both sides in a remarkably beautiful way that only someone who has read the books, papers, letters, and journals intimately can.

Maria says in the bibliography:

Traversal is the work of seven years of writing and a lifetime of reading, of consciously and unconsciously absorbed material irreducible to a complete bibliography.

Everyone should read this book. Savor the words, the stories, and the history, and let Maria’s writing carry you to a place of reflection. I guarantee you’ll find yourself rereading paragraphs and pages, drawn in by the beauty and thought woven into them.

Personal Thoughts Invoked by Reading This Book

(scattered thoughts that I wanted to weave into my review, but was unable to)

I would love to know how Maria keeps track of all her thought lines, how she organizes her research, and how she decides where to include it in the story.
I am struck by how often they read to each other. Today, we seem to only read aloud to children. But, we have things read to us like audiobooks…
I’ve never been drawn to reading Frankenstein before. Knowing the author and the history brings it into focus for me in a way I’ve never had before. How many other books am I missing out on? How many things do I know about Mary’s life now that I can see shaped in her writing?
Read it digitally with a built-in dictionary or have a physical dictionary at your side; Maria’s vocabulary far surpasses mine.
Compassion blossoms from the taste of suffering, the touch, the sight, the stink of suffering upon your clothes and mind.
We, humans, do ourselves a disservice by averting our eyes from human suffering.
Some of my most powerful thoughts and self-reflections come from reading. Just like all the people in this beautiful book, the power of the printed word has no equal.
Remove gender from a relationship, and it’s still love. Remove sex from a relationship, and it’s still love. Love surpasses all; put anything in the way, and love finds a way.

Quotes

There is no universal morality, no single organizing principle of power, no correct shape to love. And yet something, something unites us. Ruth rendered love as a fluid thing, a forceful thing, a slippery thing with a will of its own, which no vessel can hold and no sword can punish into a shape.

Two centuries later, a small tribe of renegade scholars would formalize this method of observation in a new science they would christen cultural anthropology, traversing the world to demonstrate systematically something that would always remain difficult for the human animal to face and fathom: that the discomfort with which we recoil at cultural practices and personal choices different from our own, the judgments we lash on the lives and loves of others, are data not about the other but about ourselves, revealing our own fears and insecurities, our closures of mind and clenchings of heart.

How do we live with our human fragility, with our existential loneliness, with our profound porousness to circumstance and to the conditioning that pumps the human heart’s dual capacities for good and evil?
How, in this world born by brutality–by a gauntlet of violent collisions between rocky bodies formed from the debris that swarmed the Sun 4.5 billion years ago, bodies that went on to pulverize each other into Earth and Moon–do we find a semblance of peace, among and within the particles of our humanity?

The 1769 Transit of Venus had furnished the model for such global unity through science, through the shared search for universal truth. It had also, by hijacking the astronomical mission as a weapon of political power and as a means to material gain, furnished the building blocks of every global war to come.

Cook could not have known it then, but his arrival to these strange and splendid lands would be the beginning of a British occupation that would bleed into multigenerational trauma for native peoples, into the violent erasure of the oldest continuous culture on Earth, and into the dispassionate extinction of entire species. Within a century of his landfall at Australia and New Zealand, 90 percent of the native inhabitants would be dead. A regime of racial tyranny would slowly siphon the survivors of dignity, that lifeblood.

Both Wollstonecraft and Godwin made their reputations on the bold denunciation of institutions, including the institution of marriage: Wollstonecraft in Vindication in 1792, Godwin in An Enquiry Concerning the Nature of Political Justice in 1793, which issued a rigorously reasoned eight-book call for a society of equals, indicting government, religion, and marriage as oppressive forces that limit individual freedom and gape the abyss of inequality. Government and religion, Godwin argued, would be rendered obsolete with sufficient advancement of human knowledge and morality. “Marriage, as now understood,” he wrote, “is a monopoly, and the worst of monopolies. So long as two human beings are forbidden, by positive institution, to follow the dictates of their own mind, prejudice will be alive and vigorous.” Wollstonecraft inveighed against marriage as the only means for women to “rise in the world,” which in turn reduced their aspirations to those of “mere animals” and made them act as children once they did enter this institution of wholesale dependency.
The woman who has only been taught to please, will soon find that her charms are oblique sun-beams.

What she called for instead–equal access to education and an emphasis on the intellectual and moral development of girls, rather than their looks, dress, and manners–seems banal by our present standards, almost embarrassing. The luxury of being embarrassed by it–in just five human lifetimes, in a species 7,500 generations old–is the measure of our progress.

We feel first and think second, then spend our lives contorting to invert the order, sublimating emotion to reason, only to find ourselves made smaller and less alive by the flight from feeling.

No one connected this uncanny weather to the Tambora eruption. News of it didn’t even reach Europe and America for months. In Ireland, the first mention of Tambora appeared nine months after the eruption, which had savaged the island’s harvest and unleashed a famine-fomented typhoid epidemic that killed sixty thousand people. Meteorology was an unborn science. These were calamities without causal link. An enormous hand seemed to have shaken the snow globe of spacetime until the parts came loose and fell in all the wrong places across the miniature of life.

so many lives, millions, might have been spared; among them might have been another Cook, another Wollstonecraft, another Einstein; the bicycle might not exist, Frankenstein might not exist, the opioid crisis might not exist. Over and over chance reaches into the loom of the possible to unspool the events of our lives, lives livable only if we never think about how unrecognizable the tapestry would be had any one thread been different.

A limitation of the human animal is that we stand up more easily for those who are like us along some vector of identity or affiliation than for those who are unlike us. Morality may simply be the work of rising from the two-dimensional world of the ego so that the axis becomes a plane of shared human experience. Another limitation, and perhaps our greatest: Nothing appalls us more than the world’s unkindness to us, yet we are never as kind to others as we wish they were to us.

This is the great delusion: how much our hero mythos of personal choice and character conceals these elements of chance, and to what extent character is at all separable from those subatomic particles of personhood. Infinite tributaries of chance stream into the mirage-cataract of any choice. Character is just the vapor of chemistry and chance.

Finished Reading: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 07:23:47 -0700

Finished reading: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan 📚

Another powerful, beautifully written book by Claire Keegan.

Do yourself a favor: pour yourself a cup/mug/pint/glass of something, sit down with this book, and read it from start to finish in one sitting.

Powerful, sobering, thought-provoking prose that seeps into you and will stay in your thoughts for days to come.

We have a lot to answer for, us humans.

Finished Reading: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab 📚

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 16:36:34 -0700

Finished reading: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab 📚

Do you like vampires?

Do you like good writing and a great story?

You’ll like this.

Not for everyone, but if you’re a fan of V.E. Schwab, this fits in nicely. She’s a great storyteller and brings the characters alive. I do have quibbles with the ending, though. Decide for yourself.

Finished reading: The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgaard 📚

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 18:00:28 -0700

Finished reading: The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgaard 📚

Another deep dive into complex characters, questioning life, love, and family bonds, all with a strange celestial morning star in the heavens.

I did not enjoy this second book of the series as much as the first. But I still enjoyed the immersion into a new world, the deep character development, the smoldering mysteries, and the book’s characters popping up in my head throughout the day. This second book in the series stands on its own, with only the Morning Star appearing at the end tying it to the first.

This style of book is not for everyone; you have to enjoy slow-paced, deep character building. The author’s prose is outstanding, and you will find yourself enjoying each word.

Looking forward to the final book in the series, The Third Realm.

Some favorite highlights:

Now, thirty-five years on, I still haven’t told anyone what I saw that night, or what I did. I know, you see, that I could have saved him if only I’d done the right thing. But I didn’t do the right thing, and he died. No one needs to know. It’s my memory, and mine alone, and unless something unforeseen happens, I’ll take it with me to the grave.

‘Mum, you can’t just get a job these days. It’s 1986.’

The world was outside us, it was something we were in. But seeing it, it became a part of us. So wasn’t the world then inside us? If it was only on the outside and nothing of it got in, everything would just be dark. The same surely applied to hearing and smell and touch. Our senses took what was external and turned it into something internal. If the world couldn’t get inside us, it wouldn’t exist.

‘However much you feed a wolf, it always looks to the forest. We are all wolves of the dense forest of Eternity,’

New Book Alert 🚨 Maria Popova - Traversal 📚

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 17:54:26 -0700

Maria Popova has a new book out today Traversal.

Synopsis from Kobo:

“From the Marginalian creator and bestselling author Maria Popova, a bold exploration of what makes a meaningful life. What is life? What is death? What makes a body a person? What makes a planet a world? In Traversal, Maria Popova illuminates our various instruments of reckoning with the bewilderment of being alive—our telescopes and our treatises, our postulates and our poems—through the intertwined lives, loves, and legacies of visionaries both celebrated and sidelined by history, people born into the margins of their time and place who lived to write the future: Mary Shelley, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Fanny Wright, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, Marie Tharp, Alfred Wegener, Humphry Davy, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead. Woven throughout their stories are other threads—the first global scientific collaboration, the Irish potato famine, the decoding of the insulin molecule, the invention of the bicycle, how nature creates blue—to make the tapestry of meaning more elaborate yet clearer as the book advances, converging on the ultimate question of what makes life alive and worth living. By turns epic and intimate—as concerned with the physical laws binding atoms into molecules as with the psychic forces binding us to one other—Traversal explores the universe between cells and souls to reveal the world, and our lives, in a dazzling new light.”

I have it in the queue now and look forward to reading it.

I LOVED her first book Figuring.

Paused: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson 📚

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 09:50:05 -0700

~~Did Not Finish:~~ Paused: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson 📚

Paused for now. Will have to come back later and try again. 115 pages or so into the story, and I don’t have a connection to the characters or the story. There is such high praise for this book, it surprises me. But, it may just take more time…

Gotta always remember:

Words of Wisdom from Doris Lessing:

” There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag – and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty-and vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you."

Finished Reading: Foster by Claire Keegan 📚

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 11:37:08 -0700

Finished reading: Foster by Claire Keegan 📚

This was the first book I’d ever finished, and then I immediately started over again. Claire Keegan is a master with words and story. I loved every word of this book. It’s a Novella at around 90 pages, and you will wish it were much longer.

I looked up what interviews I could find, and Keegan speaks about her meticulous revision process and reworking until every word earns its place. Sometimes, spending years on a story.

Do yourself a favor, sit down with this book and enter a moving, beautiful, story.

I’m looking forward to reading more of her work.

Some favorite highlights:

Part of me wants my father to leave me here while another part of me wants him to take me back, to what I know. I am in a spot where I can neither be what I always am nor turn into what I could be.

Her hands are like my mother’s hands but there is something else in them too, something I have never felt before and have no name for. I feel at such a loss for words but this is a new place, and new words are needed.

‘Where there’s a secret,’ she says, ‘there’s shame – and shame is something we can do without.’

This water is cool and clean as anything I have ever tasted: it tastes of my father leaving, of him never having been there, of having nothing after he was gone. I dip it again and lift it level with the sunlight. I drink six measures of water and wish, for now, that this place without shame or secrets could be my home.

Kinsella takes my hand in his. As soon as he takes it, I realise my father has never once held my hand, and some part of me wants Kinsella to let me go so I won’t have to feel this. It’s a hard feeling but as we walk along I begin to settle and let the difference between my life at home and the one I have here be. He takes shorter steps so we can walk in time. I think about the woman in the cottage, of how she walked and spoke, and conclude that there are huge differences between people.

‘You don’t ever have to say anything,’ he says. ‘Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.’

and so many more…

Finished reading: Breakneck by Dan Wang 📚

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 21:13:52 -0700

Finished reading: Breakneck by Dan Wang

This was a fast-paced and really good reflection on the differences between China and the United States—the stark differences between a country run by engineers and a country run by lawyers.

It made me question whether I would buy an iPhone again, and shocked me by the depth of suffering many people in China endure. Especially, reading the stark realities of the three-and-a-half-decade duration of the one-child policy.

It brings back the line I use far too often: “Stop the Planet, I want off.”

Highly recommend the book; it’s a quick read, and Dan does a very good job at explaining the complexities of China from a lived perspective.

“The future would be better if China could learn to build less, while the United States learns to build more.” (Dan Wang, Breakneck)

“It costs five times as much to build a kilometer of subway in New York City as it does in Paris. If it only cost twice as much, it might be a national tragedy; since it costs five times as much, it is only a statistic. There’s no reason that much older European cities should be able to build more cheaply than New York. And the people in charge don’t seem to be able to do anything about it” (Dan Wang, Breakneck)

“Americans live today in the ruins of an industrial civilization, whose infrastructure is just barely maintained and rarely expanded.” (Dan Wang, Breakneck)

“Sometimes, the only thing scarier than China’s problems are Beijing’s solutions.” (Dan Wang, Breakneck)

“It’s not just the government. America’s problem is the lawyerly society. The United States is unusual among Western countries for having so many lawyers: four hundred lawyers per hundred thousand people, which is three times higher than the average in European countries.” (Dan Wang, Breakneck)

“Nowhere in China is it advisable to drink tap water. Not even Shanghai.” (Dan Wang, Breakneck)

📚 Finished Reading: The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 19:05:28 -0700

Finished reading: The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard 📚

What can I say about this book…

I’m staring at a blinking cursor for what seems like hours, because I don’t know how to approach writing about it. I’m not as gifted with words as the author is.

It’s a powerful book, beautifully crafted, masterfully written. It haunts you when you aren’t reading it. It draws you back to it, into the book. You don’t just read it, you step inside the pages and experience it.

It starts off so mundane and ordinary, and the only reason you keep reading is how well it’s written and how well the characters are unfolded into the story. You find yourself saying, “I don’t need to know this much backstory about this guy.” But you do. As this story unfolds, it brings you to places you’ve never been before. I promise you.

This is not a book for everyone, but I suggest you start it and see what you think. I don’t know anything about Karl Ove Knausgaard, but I’ll be looking him up and stepping into his next book. He is clearly a gifted writer and a deep thinker. I don’t even remember what brought me to the book, but it’s been sitting in my To-Read pile for some time now. I thought it would be a book I’d read a few chapters of and move on.

When I wasn’t reading it, I was thinking about it. That is about the highest praise I can give a writer.

A shoutout to the translator, Martin Aitken. I don’t know if this book reads as beautifully in Norwegian as it does in English, but what a job it is to translate what the author wrote and felt and meant into another language.

This book takes mundane, ordinary people with ordinary problems and brings them alive, steps you into their world and beyond into existential questions about mortality and the afterlife. What it means to be alive. What life is about and what the bonds of family and friendship really mean.

I’m not sure if I need a break before book two of the series, maybe a palate cleanser. I feel like my brain needs a break, but at the same time, I don’t want to leave the world of Knausgaard. I’ve taken a quick peek at the reviews of book two, and it seems to be loved even more than book one. It seems Karl has really hit his stride with the second book. I’ve taken a full day off from reading and think I will jump right into it.

I have to mention the last chapter. Starting it, you think you’re done with the book, that the author is just giving you some research and backstory on the book. But halfway through, it ties right back into our characters and throws you back for even thinking the story was over. There are so many surprises in this book; it is so well written, you just have to experience it. I can see how some say it’s too slow. Enjoy the slow, enjoy the beautifully placed words side by side, weaving a masterful story together. Leave time behind and enter the story with the characters. Take a moment and look up into the heavens and gaze at the new star.

Random Thoughts:

I wish I were fluent in Norwegian just so I could read this book in its original language. How is it different? How has the meaning changed? Is it as powerful and beautiful? How did Aitken, the translator, approach the translation?
Who is Karl Ove Knausgaard? How long has he been writing? How did he learn to write like this? How much of his craft was natural vs blood, sweat, and tears of years of writing and re-writing? How long did it take him to write this book? How many pages were rewritten over and over again?
How did he meet his translator? How close are they? Does Karl interfere with or “suggest” changes to the translations?

NYT George Saunders Interview

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 16:07:26 -0700

I’m not sure why I’m so drawn to writers, other than it’s a skill that I don’t have in any form. Writers have dedicated their lives to crafting words together to tell a story that a reader can understand, identify with, sympathize with, even to the point of changing the life of that reader. The person that I am today is partly shaped by books that I’ve read.

This interview with George Saunders is a real treat.

George says;

There’s this Chekhov quote that I’m kind of living by lately. He says a work of art doesn’t have to solve a problem — it just has to formulate it correctly.

I agree, the start of solving a problem is truly identifying what the problem is. To formulate it correctly. To put it into words that can be understood. This is a skill. I see it in my own life in relationships. I complain about something and talk about the problem, but it comes across wrong to the other person, they don’t understand, or they offer a solution to the problem they perceive I’m talking about. I’m failing to formulate my problem correctly.

The art of good writing will never cease to amaze me and even though I can’t write, I sure can appreciate it, and read as much of it as I can until my dying day.

Anyway, really good interview. Read it or even better watch the video.

His new book, Vigil, comes out January 27th.

Finished Reading: Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes 📚

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 19:11:30 -0700

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes 📚

Powerful book, makes you think a lot about the human condition, how we treat each other, and the assumptions we make. Intelligence or the lack of it, and how differently we treat people with the whatever level we think they have.

Good story, powerful character building.

But I know now there’s one thing you’ve all overlooked: intelligence and education that hasn’t been tempered by human affection isn’t worth a damn.”

Finished reading: The Hobbit - Enhanced Edition by J. R. R. Tolkien 📚

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 15:11:45 -0700

Finished reading: The Hobbit (Enhanced Edition) by J. R. R. Tolkien 📚

What is there to say about this book that hasn’t already been said? First published September 21st, 1937. It’s a classic, and I enjoy re-reading it from time to time. The 75th Anniversary Edition is really well done with lots of backstory and history. They have included original artwork by Tolkien and some pages from the original manuscript. Some of the letters between Tolkien and his publisher are interesting to read; the business side of books always gets in the way of a good story.

The quote that stood out to me this time:

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” ~ Thorin Oakenshield

Finished Reading: 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin 📚

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 18:50:07 -0700

Finished reading: 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin 📚

Good book, well written. Focuses on the bankers and people who brought on the crash, the aftermath and the laws and institutions put into place to prevent another one.

As technology made farming more efficient and less dependent on physical labor, huge numbers of farmworkers fell into economic distress, along with the towns they lived in, creating a widening gulf between the urban haves and the rural have-nots. Wall Street became like a giant balloon floating above the common people, its self-mythologizing leaders enjoying the comforts of what felt like a privileged realm. Government took little notice, as an extreme form of laissez-faire reigned in Washington.

Very good book to read for any market investors, especially right now. There are many similarities.

Finished reading: The Boy on the Bridge by M. R. Carey 📚

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 10:17:39 -0700

Finished reading: The Boy on the Bridge by M. R. Carey 📚

Set in the same world as The Girl With All The Gifts, but along a different timeline. Again, a good story that made me think about it while I wasn’t reading it. The end has a great 20 years later Epilogue that ties back in with Melanie. I won’t say anymore, but it’s a great ending to a very good book.

Finished reading: The Girl With All the Gifts by M. R. Carey 📚

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 10:03:22 -0700

Finished reading: The Girl With All the Gifts by M. R. Carey 📚

I really enjoyed this book. If you like apocalyptic end-of-the-world stories, this is a good one. It’s a simple book, but well written with good character building. It was a book I thought about when I wasn’t reading it and made extra time to get back to it.

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 14:28:30 -0700

Finished reading: Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen 📚

Perhaps it’s time for everyone to revisit the magnitude of nuclear war…

Read this in two sittings. I couldn’t stop reading it. It both fascinated me and scared the living shit out of me at the same time. A must-read for everyone.

📚 Parable of the Sower

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 13:40:27 -0700

Finished reading: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler 📚

I’m a fan of post-apocalyptic stories and this one does not disappoint. Really enjoyed the story.

Lauren Olamina lives in an America ravaged by climate change, social collapse and extreme violence. When she loses her home and most of her family, she travels North with a small group of survivors looking for a new place to settle. Along the way she shares her new belief system, “Earthseed” which teaches that God is not something or someone but change itself. God is Change.

“All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change.”

An interesting twist is that Lauren has Hyperempathy. At times very much a curse living in such a violent world. I’ll let you read the book to find out more about Hyperempathy.

I may take a break and read something else then jump back to part two of the series, Parable of the Talents.

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 14:15:13 -0700

Finished reading: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin 📚

If you haven’t read this before, I recommend the 50th Anniversary edition with the introduction by David Mitchell and the Afterword by Charlie Jane Anders. Beautiful work with a deep message.

From 2003 to 2023, the share of Americans who read for pleasure fell 40 percent, a sharp decline that is part of a continuing downward trend

Thu, 21 Aug 2025 10:46:48 -0700

“From 2003 to 2023, the share of Americans who read for pleasure fell 40 percent, a sharp decline that is part of a continuing downward trend.”

Gift Article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/well/reading-pleasure-decline-study.html?unlocked_article_code=1.f08.XJt4.OS0gfQAX-Z18&smid=url-share

This really saddens me. I know personally (and I’m in the minority here), I would much rather read a great book than play video games. And, it’s not from trying, I have a PS5, Gameboys, and Switches, and I just don’t play them very much at all. When I’m reading a good book, I think about it when I’m not reading and look forward to getting back to it.

To each their own, but I fear that we are not promoting reading and showing children the joys of it. My wife was a grade school librarian for 12+ years and read to students every day, opening up whole new worlds for them. Sadly, librarians seem to be a thing of the past. It is our loss.

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 12:27:36 -0700

📚 WSJ - 15 Books We Read This Week.

Gift Article

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/15-books-we-read-this-week-51973894?st=vBaQtt&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 12:21:40 -0700

📚 In reference to finding great new books to read, here is some help from the Atlantic:

Gift Link: https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2025/07/one-book-everyone-recommends/683582/?gift=-eLYw90o90IZjS23Qvwmd883CDjEY5AwzeSEzDThiWk

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 10:38:26 -0700

Finished reading: A Marriage At Sea by Sophie Elmhirst 📚

Really enjoyed the story, if you like survival stories, you’ll like this one.

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 18:06:27 -0700

Finished reading: Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green 📚

Excelllent book. A book that should be read by everyone.

1.25 Million people die every year from TB. Experts say that no one should die, every case is curable.

Tue, 25 Feb 2025 08:05:08 -0700

PSA: Tomorrow is the cutoff to download your Amazon books. How To Do Stuff walks you through step by step how to do it with automation. Easy Peazy.

youtu.be/A4nRGFUCl…

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:28:17 -0700

I did 1,157 books the old fashioned way, with lots and lots and lots of clicking. Don’t be like me, be smart. Follow this 👇

‘How to bulk download Kindle files, while you can’ 🔗 Jason Snell / sixcolors.com

The Challenge of Reading in the Digital Age

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 17:09:46 -0700

What’s unique about the number of books read?

Why do we track how many books we read? Why not count articles, magazines, or blog posts? Imagine an app that monitors every word you read and provides a total at the end of the year. Perhaps the next wave of AI-powered glasses will track not only how much we read but what we retain.

But does the number really matter? If you quizzed me on all 30 books I read last year, how much could I recall? Would I even want to know my exact retention rate? Maybe I should focus less on quantity and more on comprehension. Could tools like Readwise, which helps revisit past highlights, improve retention?

One approach I’ve been refining is writing about each book after finishing it. I review my highlights, jot down my thoughts, and create a mini book report. Readwise syncs with Obsidian, pulling in my highlights so I can reflect on key insights. I structure my notes with sections like Key Points, Personal Impact, and Action Items, and I’m considering adding details on who might benefit from reading the book, whether I’ve shared it with others, and if I’ve blogged about it.

The Power of Books

Books offer something unique–deep knowledge, immersion into another world, and a window into someone else’s perspective. Yet, attention spans seem to be shrinking. The internet has rewired how we consume information, making it harder to sit down and focus on a book. Some people struggle to finish long-form articles, let alone entire books. Does that matter? Are short-form videos and bite-sized text replacing deep study? The answer seems obvious.

Reading is a skill that requires practice. We should guard against losing it. Slow down. Put your phone on Do Not Disturb. Get lost in a good story. Let a book transport you beyond the present moment.

I struggle with this too. Even after reading over 30 books last year, I sometimes find my mind wandering after just a few sentences. I’ll read a page, then realize I absorbed none of it. Even rereading it doesn’t always help. When that happens, I close my eyes and focus on my breath–just breathe, slow down, reset. Losing the ability to focus is unsettling, not just for individuals but for society, workplaces, and families.

A Modern Problem?

Is this inability to focus solely a product of the internet age? I’m not sure. I didn’t use computers until high school or have internet access until college, yet I remember struggling to concentrate even then. Maybe distraction isn’t new–maybe it’s just easier than ever to indulge in.

The real challenge is how we engage with information. Do we skim and forget, or do we slow down and absorb? Reading isn’t just about finishing books–it’s about understanding, applying, and growing. That’s what I want to improve.

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 21:35:34 -0700

(⭐️3.75/5) - Finished reading: CABIN by Patrick Hutchison. It’s a good book, makes you laugh, and brought back many memories for me building forts in the woods as a kid. A writer with zero handyman skills buys a $7000 cabin in the woods of Washington State and tells the adventures of fixing it up along with the joys and life-changing memories of having an off-grid cabin that eventually changed his life and career. 📚

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 06:01:00 -0700

This has challenged some of my beliefs about digital reading. I’m torn about my transformation to digital reading and am watchful for the downsides and pitfalls.

🔗 The Deep Space of Digital Reading (Paul La Farge / nautil.us)

In A History of Reading, the Canadian novelist and essayist Alberto Manguel describes a remarkable transformation of human consciousness, which took place around the 10th century A.D.: the advent of silent reading. Human beings have been reading for thousands of years, but in antiquity, the normal thing was to read aloud

The predecessor to the ebook reader ☺️

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 16:00:36 -0700

‘Public Domain Day 2025 in Literature - Blog’ 🔗 Standard EBooks / standardebooks.org

Books by William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Mahatma Gandhi, and John Steinbeck enter the U.S. public domain

Where Do You find Books To Read

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 21:37:14 -0700

This has been a struggle for me in the past. I often found myself running out of books and searching for something new to read, which led me to browse bookstores. Each visit is a wonderful experience; independent shops have a unique charm, often showcasing local authors, and the smell of books is irreplaceable. However, there were times when I left empty-handed, without anything that sparked my interest.

To tackle this, having a collection of online tools for discovering books is essential. Here are some ideas that may inspire you.

Now, I face a new challenge: a to-read list that keeps expanding, which is, in fact, a wonderful problem to have. I used to feel overwhelmed by this, but I’ve learned to embrace the reality that countless books will always remain out of reach. That’s why it’s so important to focus on reading what you love. Don’t linger on a book that feels just okay; there are countless extraordinary stories waiting for you. And don’t let that ever-growing pile of unread books weigh you down; it’s always there with your next book!

I will continue to add to this list with your suggestions and any helpful resources I come across. Please email or comment with your favorites, and I’ll include them.

Updated March 18, 2026 from Somewhere in Arizona

Major Platforms

Five Books - They ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview. This site has an archive of more than 1700 interviews and 8000 book recommendations. They publish at least two new interviews per week.

The Millions - A great online publication devoted to books. Check out The Great Fall 2024 Book Preview as a good place to start.

NYT book reviews

100 Best Books of the 21st Century - NYT Gift Article

The Best Books of 2024 - The New Yorker

Atlantic book reviews

NYR Of Books - The New York Review Magazine is over my head and usually out of my wheelhouse, yet I still enjoy it and find it helpful. Although I usually read only one or two articles, the ads are mostly for books, and it’s been a great place to find new books I would never have ordinarily seen.

Washington Post book reviews

New Books To Read in 2025 - Penguin Random House. It also has a good weekly newsletter about their books.

Red Pen Reviews - Expert nutrition book reviews that sort fact from fiction

GoodReads - Amazon company

StoryGraph - A fully-featured Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads

Rakuten Kobo - For about a year now, I’ve stopped using Amazon and Kindle for my ebooks. Kobo has been a great replacement. They have a great book selection, and while still a little rough in areas, the Kobo reading app for iPhone and iPad has been good enough. I hope they continue to polish it. I haven’t tried any of their e-readers, as the iPhone/iPad apps are enough for me. I’ve heard really good things about them on Reddit.

Personal Sites & Blogs

Derek Silvers - He does a good job blogging about the books he’s read.

Trey Hunner - Has a great 2024 recap on his books and audiobooks.

The Library of Alexandra - I just found this via microblog and am looking forward to exploring it.

Robert Breen - Excellent book reviews

For myself, this is just Mastodon and the newly found Micro.blog. After you acquire a group of people you enjoy following, it can be a great place to see what they are reading and why.

Micro.blog - Really is amazing for book ideas and reviews. In your Discovery feed, you can filter by books to see what everyone is reading and their reviews. I’m new to it, but it looks like a gold mine!

Podcasts

It’s a great place to hear interviews with authors, or you can search your podcast player for book review podcasts.

If Books Could Kill - I haven’t listened to many of them, so I’m unfamiliar with their general theme and structure, but it might be worth checking out.

Friends and Family

I reached out to a small group of friends and said, “Let’s have a texting group where we text about the books we’ve enjoyed and recommend.” This has been an excellent source.

Community Driven

Literature Map - Type in an author, and it will show you other similar authors.

Recommend Me A Book

BookWyrm - BookWyrm is a social network for tracking your reading, discussing books, writing reviews, and discovering what to read next. Federation allows BookWyrm users to join small, trusted communities that can connect with one another and with other ActivityPub services like Mastodon.

Library Thing - A Home For Your Books, LibraryThing is a free, library-quality catalog to track reading progress or your whole library.

What Should I Read Next - Enter a book you like, and the site will analyze the huge database of real readers' favorite books to provide book recommendations and suggestions for what to read next.

r/books - Reddit

Literal* - Track what you’re reading, follow friends, and join clubs to collectively explore the ideas of the world’s greatest authors. I don’t use this site because the same features are built into Micro Blog, but it looks excellent for tracking your lists: Currently Reading, To Read, and Read, making custom Bookshelves, and reading other people’s book reviews. If I didn’t have Micro Blog, I’d be here.

Library Tools

OverDrive/Libby - Free ebooks, audiobooks & magazines from your local library.
You only need a public library card or access through your workplace or university. Always free - no fees or subscriptions.

Free EBook Sources

Standard EBooks - Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven effort to produce a collection of high-quality, carefully formatted, accessible, open-source, and free public domain ebooks that meet or exceed the quality of commercially produced ebooks. The text and cover art in our ebooks are already believed to be in the U.S. public domain, and Standard Ebooks dedicates its own work to the public domain, thus releasing the entirety of each ebook file into the public domain. All the ebooks we produce are distributed free of cost and free of U.S. copyright restrictions.

Soon, you’ll have a huge To-Read Pile!

books on Cliff538

Finished reading: The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown 📚

Custom Book Pages in Micro.blog

Finished reading: Train Dreams by Denis Johnson 📚

Finished reading: The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown 📚

Finished reading: Tambora by Gillen D'Arcy Wood 📚

Book Quotes

Finished reading: The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster 📚

Update to Calibre-Web: Worth it?

Finished reading: Every Day I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books by Hwang Bo-Reum 📚

Finished reading: Biological War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen 📚

Calibre-Web

Finished reading: Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan 📚

📚 Great British Bake Off - Of Books

ON YOUR MARKS – A Book You Can’t Wait To Read

SIGNATURE BAKE – A Book From Your Favourite Genre

SHOWSTOPPER – A Book With A Beautiful Cover

SOGGY BOTTOM – A Book That Made You Cry

HOLLYWOOD HANDSHAKE – Your Perfect Book

LEAVING THIS WEEK – A Book You Didn’t Finish

STAR BAKER – A Five Star Read

AND THE WINNER IS – A Book By A Favourite Author

Finished reading: Passing of the Dragon by Ken Liu 📚

Finished reading: A World Appears by Michael Pollan 📚

My Thoughts

Quotes

Want to read: Everything Is Photograph by Patricia Albers 📚

Finished reading: So Late in the Day Stories of Women and Men by Claire Keegan 📚

Finished reading: Go Computer Now! by Ben Zotto 📚

The Good Stuff - April 2026

A smattering of useful things I’ve come across this month

Books added to the queue

Finished reading: Traversal by Maria Popova 📚

Personal Thoughts Invoked by Reading This Book

Quotes

Finished Reading: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Finished Reading: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab 📚

Finished reading: The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgaard 📚

New Book Alert 🚨 Maria Popova - Traversal 📚

Paused: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson 📚

Finished Reading: Foster by Claire Keegan 📚

Finished reading: Breakneck by Dan Wang 📚

📚 Finished Reading: The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard

NYT George Saunders Interview

Finished Reading: Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes 📚

Finished reading: The Hobbit - Enhanced Edition by J. R. R. Tolkien 📚

Finished Reading: 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin 📚

Finished reading: The Boy on the Bridge by M. R. Carey 📚

Finished reading: The Girl With All the Gifts by M. R. Carey 📚

📚 Parable of the Sower

From 2003 to 2023, the share of Americans who read for pleasure fell 40 percent, a sharp decline that is part of a continuing downward trend

The Challenge of Reading in the Digital Age

What’s unique about the number of books read?

The Power of Books

A Modern Problem?

Where Do You find Books To Read

Major Platforms

Personal Sites & Blogs

Social Media

Podcasts

Friends and Family

Community Driven

Library Tools

Free EBook Sources