The Obelisk Gate N. K. Jemison, 2016 Well I enjoyed The Fifth Season, despite having misgivings about the seemingly gratuitous violence and gore, so I went ahead and started on The Obelisk Gate but I couldn't keep going to the finish. Somewhere around page 355 (out of 407) I decided I'd had enough, that the author was …

Becky Chambers I've now read three books by Becky Chambers, and they're all good. I feel I'm in safe hands with anything by her I might pick up. Two of the books are adult science-fiction, and one is young adult (science) fiction, but from my perwpective it's easy to see a common theme in all of them: Portraits of …

Winterhouse Ben Guterson Chloe Bristol (illustration) I don't know how the book got in to the house, but there it was so when we ran out of the previous thing I started reading Winterhouse to the kids. Ostensibly we read four nights out of seven, but the screen is compelling and it's usually more like seven out of …

The Fifth Season N. K. Jemison, 2015 Jonathan recommended the Torn Earth Trilogy to me, and I tore through book one. The backdrop of the story is a world with frequent geologic unrest. So much of day-to0-day life is predicated on needing to survive cataclysm at just about any moment. In that respect it's reminscent of …

The Character of Physical Law Richard Feinman, 1964 I'm currently slowly re-reading Feinman's Character of Physical Law. It's a transcription of a series of popular lectures he delivered. At this point I've read enough popular science that there's not much that's new to me, but I'm still trying to grasp some of the …

Takeover - Hitler's Final Rise to Power Timothy Ryback, 2024 Another history-of-Nazi-Germany book, Takeover details the last year or so but especially the final few months leading up to Hitler being appointed the Chancellor of Germany. The fundamental question on the table, staring at us all, is how a constitutional …

Dune & Dune Messiah Frank Herbert, 1965 Some neighbors went for a sort of men's-afternoon-out to see the new Dune 2 movie, which got me thinking, so I went ahead and watched the recent Dune 1 movie, and then #2 as well. As action films go they're on the good side of the spectrum thanks to a cerebral bent, but at …

Merchant of Venice Shakespeare I have not read very much Shakespeare. In fact, I think really just this and Hamlet a year or so ago. It's almost difficult to believe they're by the same author. Hamlet, with all its faults, is moderately ornate and well thought out. One of my main criteria for literature is whether or …

The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway Hemingway, 1924 - ~1957 This was at least my third time time reading this physical copy of Hemingway's Complete Short Stories. The book physically is hanging in there, but a lot has been asked of it. The pages are torn, the spine is held together with duct-tape, every …

This post catches us up on recent non-fiction I've read or started. The Climate Book Greta Thunberg, 2022 I haven't been able to read this yet; it sits on the shortlist shelf accusing me. It's right next to Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. Thunberg's book is a collection of original short essays …

Hello ! It's been a long time. I'm not reading at the speed I used to, but I'm still reading ! This post is covering just a few of the highlights nobel-winners read in the past few years. The Piano Teacher Elfriede Jelinek, 1983 Sarah and Renee and Tomy and I were thinking how few Nobel winners we've read, but we …