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This book came so highly recommended from a friend that I suppose my expectations were out of whack. Didion is a wonderful writer, and there are some real gems in here. But a lot of this lacks currency in 2023, and so I was honestly a little underwhelmed. But I think that’s a me-problem. In the right mindset I think it could do wonders.

It’s hard to overstate how excellent this book is. I’ve read a lot of Gleick, starting with Chaos when I was 17 years old. That book was formative for me. It made me want to be a writer, and to learn how to explain complex things beautifully.

I am a professional computer programmer, and so I have a decent background in the material covered by this book. I know Shannon’s work. I’ve read extensively about Turing and Babbage. And I’ve tried (and often failed) to find more to read about Lovelace. But still, even though nothing in this book was entirely unknown to me, I found it endlessly fascinating, and honestly even moving. Gleick is such a master of this kind of work. He pulls you in, fills your mind with ideas, and shows you why it matters.

This is a beautiful, informative, masterfully written book.

I’ve read this book several times. This time I listened to the audiobook with my wife on a long car drive. It’s the sort of book that speaks for itself. I feel like anything I try to say about it only detracts from it. It is, on its own, a perfect thing. Just read it.

Sammy still refused to admit to himself—at that irrelevant, senatorial level of consciousness where the questions that desire has already answered are proposed and debated and tabled till later—that he was in love, or falling in love.

Poetry is just about the only kind of book I prefer to read in print (vs. ebook). When I scored a gift card to a local bookstore I used it to buy a few books of poetry. For the most part I chose at random. I had never heard of Lang Leav. But I liked the cover, and I liked the sweetness of a few poems I glanced through.

I read this book cover to cover. I won’t say every poem is precisely my thing, but every poem is lovely, and there are many that strike my particular chord.

How do I thank my mother / for giving me the life / she desperately wanted / for herself?

Emily Dickinson said she knows something is poetry when “I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off.” I’m not sure what that meant to her, but I think I recognize the feel of it. The books I love the most do this to me. And honestly, these are usually not books driven by character and plot. There is some authentic quality to the books I love that goes beyond the story, to the point that even some books with almost no story at all thrill me.

All this to say, On the Beach is a very straightforward plot-driven book. It is the kind of book I would generally say was good, but didn’t take the top of my head off. And yet, ever since I read this two years ago I haven’t stopped thinking about it. So I decided to listen to the audiobook on …

My daughter’s girlfriend told me she read Shirley Jackson as a young teen, and Jackson instantly became her favorite author. I had never read any Jackson at all, so I bought this collection and read them all. Folks, I have questions. No, just kidding. These stories are superb. So very cynical. But superb. I am a little surprised a teenage girl would consider these her favorite stories. But that’s a good surprise.

This was recommended by my oldest child Isabel. It is a beautifully written introspective story set within a conflict I’m not educated enough to comment on. The book is excellent. The characters enter your heart and will not leave. Rabinyan is an expert and constructing a believable powerful romantic relationship.

Kantor is an impeccable writer and this book is beautifully constructed. But it veers waaaaay too close to white southern apologia to be excusable in this the twenty-first century. I understand that Andersonville prison was a real place, and that the tragic events of the story are based in truth and worthy of examination. But Kantor’s sympathetic characters seem wholly unaware of the centuries of suffering they themselves have perpetuated leading up to the events of the story, and Kantor doesn’t seem to think it worth mentioning.

But other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln? Because yes, if you ignore that glaring detail the book is very good.

I’ve read this book a dozen times. This was a re-read with a book club. Still as great as ever.

No damn cat. No damn cradle.

My daughter’s gilrfriend is reading this for the first time, and it got me amped up to re-read it myself. There’s a special place in my heart reserved especially for this book. For Gravesend, New Hampshire, and for John Wheelwright, for Hester and even John’s stern grandmother, Harriet. And of course for the miracle of Owen himself.

YOU CAN’T TAKE A MIRACLE AND JUST SHOW IT!

I read Elizabeth Bear’s wonderful short story Thanksgiving and immediately fell in love with it. So I decided to read one of her books. I think I picked this at random, and it turns out it is part of a series (and not the first). But that didn’t seem to matter.

The tone of this book is very different from Thanksgiving. It is much more of a straight-down-the-middle SciFi novel: suspenseful plot, diverse cast of characters, and a far out universe.

I enjoyed it a lot. It is fast-paced, fun, and imaginative. I especially loved the incredible diversity of sentient characters. She’s got humans, bugs, sentient trees, robots, and more. And many of these are deeply imagined and internally coherent. She imagines a universe full of complex cultural interactions, and a people who have learned to get along beautifully. It is quite a feat.

This book shot straight onto my favorite books list. It is a fictional story based on historical events: it tells the story of Jesuit missionaries operating under intense government persecution in 17th century Japan. But it is really a book about doubt, faith, and a yearning for assurance. In this book, that takes the form of a desire to hear the voice of God. But while these characters are Christian, this is not a Christian book. At least it isn’t to me.

Artistically it is a remarkable achievement. Given the title, and the themes, it is unsurprising but delightful that the book is full of intricate sound detail. We hear, as much as see, the Japan the characters inhabit. In this way it reminds me of The Virgin Suicides, another book that makes heavy use of non-visual imagery. Consider this passage, for example, after the protagonist Rodrigues has witnessed the …

This is a periodic re-read for me. A much harder book to grok on first reading than McCarthy’s more straight-forward Border Trilogy, but an even better book. (And I adore the Border Trilogy). It has one of the great opening lines: “See the child. He is pale and thin.” And from there it drives hard, never relenting until the inevitable bloodletting, and the even more inevitable dance.

The character of The Judge is one of the great characters in English literature. A monster, a phantom, a philosopher. He is horrifying in spite of or because he is in some sense just Mankind stripped of pretense.

Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.

It is a dark and unsparing view of the human condition.

Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.

I believe it is a fact that …