There are some authors who sprinkle poetic imagery in their writing like a very expensive spice. A chapter might end with a weighty metaphor. A new character enters the stage with some artful simile. Patrick Rothfuss is not one of those authors. Under his pen, a character can’t cross a room without evoking elder gods, the great cycles of nature, and the petty generosity of humanity. His writing is thick. It is delicious. It is magical.
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2026-07-14
The Narrow Road Between Desires by Patrick Rothfuss
2025-08-04
Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer
The study of history is a peculiar paradox. One would think that the past is known; after all, we were there. This is technically true, but reality is not so straightforward. Even if humanity recorded every event and every thought, there would inevitably be gaps. The simple distance that grows with every passing day means that records are lost, context is forgotten, cultural norms drift, and interpreting what records do survive becomes more treacherous. Our efforts to interpret the past inevitably become part of the past which inexorably drifts into the mist. In “Inventing the Renaissance”, Ada Palmer presents a history of the Renaissance while unpacking some of the baggage around the Renaissance and histories thereof.
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2025-08-04
Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
John Green has gone down a rabbit-hole in his distinctive self-aware, obsessive-compulsive sort of way. This slender volume contains histories of Tuberculosis at different scales, from the grand sweeps of civilization to the individual, and the view is alternately bleak and inspiring (bleakspiring?). While technically a writer, Green could be described as a musician of the heart. This is a story of a disease, medicine, culture, but mostly a story of humanity, our mistakes, our struggles, our drive to do better. This is an important story, told skillfully and succinctly. I think the more people who know it, the better off we will all be.
2025-05-15
Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson partakes of that particular style of travel wherein one checks into a hotel and then just goes for a walk with minimal, if any, guidance. Passing judgement on any place that rates as a city or even a large town based solely on what you encounter within walking distance of wherever your lodgings happen to be strikes me as miraculous. It also sounds, to me, like an entirely unpleasant way to see a place, but Bryson is a seasoned traveler, and I will defer to his experience. The tour that is the subject of this book is a rather unusual one, so perhaps I am being unfair in my judgement.
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2024-11-19
Nudge, the Final Edition by Richard H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein
This is a welcome revision to a hugely influential book. If by some chance you’ve escaped its influence, this is one of the works that brought many (and the concept of) standard biases to the popular consciousness, and more importantly, explained some practical applications of that knowledge. These applications have become the defaults (see what I did there?) for many companies and governments.
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2024-11-19
Cobalt Red by Siddharth Kara
If, upon learning about some awful episode in the history of Western Colonialism, you take comfort in the fact that that age has passed, then this book is for you. That age hasn’t passed, and even in 2024, your life is built upon the exploitation of people whose only crime is where they happen to have been born. Welcome to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. If you are willing to look past corporate platitudes and can stomach some unpleasant truths, Siddharth Kara will take you on a tour.
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2023-04-18
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
This is a tolerable work of fiction that relies heavily on nostalgia. This is a story about normal people having normal people problems. It is basically inoffensive, occasionally touching, a little inspiring, but mostly bland. Like a PG Disney version of reality, it penetrates the surface of life but doesn’t get very deep.
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2023-04-18
Altered Traits by Daniel Goleman and Richard J Davidson
I wish there were more books like this. In fact, I wish most books were like this. You can find any number of volumes about meditation, but these are mostly guides and personal stories that extoll the benefits of a certain practice. This book is different. This is a summary of meditation research written for a popular audience. It explains what exactly has been tested scientifically and what hasn’t. This is a catalog of evidence. The authors go down the list of claims made about what meditation can do and provide a simple reality check. They also provide some essential details, clarifying the differences between different types of meditation, and which types have been associated with which results; breaking up the monolith of “meditation” in the popular conversation.
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2023-04-18
I Never Thought of It That Way by Mónica Guzmán
This is a curious book. On the one hand, it is a pithy self-help book, riddled with acronyms and buzzwords, and continuously padded with “we’ll talk about that in a later chapter” and “like we talked about in a previous chapter”. On the other hand, it is an effortless and engrossing read. Ironically, Guzmán’s conversational tone betrays her professional expertise. Here is a journalist of high caliber; someone who is experienced and expert at talking to anyone.
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