books
Finished Reading: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
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 📚
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 📚
Another deep dive into complex characters, questioning life, love, and family bonds, all with a strange celestial morning star in the heavens.
New Book Alert 🚨 Maria Popova - Traversal 📚
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 📚
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 📚
This was the first book I’d ever finished, and I immediately started over. Claire Keegan is a master with words and story.
Finished reading: Breakneck by Dan Wang 📚
This fast-paced book offers a compelling exploration of the stark contrasts between China and the United States, highlighting issues related to governance, infrastructure, and societal challenges.
📚 Finished Reading: The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard
A beautifully crafted and haunting novel by Karl Ove Knausgaard immerses readers in the lives of ordinary characters while exploring deep existential questions about life and relationships.
NYT George Saunders Interview
NYT George Saunders Interview: The interviewer, with a deep appreciation for writers and their skill in articulating complex problems, highlights the transformative power of storytelling.
Finished Reading: Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes 📚
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 📚
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 📚
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 📚
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 📚
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.
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.
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
Reading for pleasure among Americans has seen a significant decline of 40% over the past two decades.