Things to Read

My highlights from the last year ... and I want to know yours!

For nearly a year now I’ve been keeping this little digital note where I write quick reviews of nearly every book I read. ((I use Google Keep.)

I haven’t known what I was going to do with this, but then the other day a reader (an ex-girlfriend from middle school) asked if I had any books I’d recommend. Well, as a matter of fact I do!

Here’s a list of my favorites, in a very loose kind of ranking with some grades. I also created a quick poll where you can share your reading habits and your favorites (and I’ll reflect those back here.) This is my way of getting you to tell me what to read next.

All links are to Amazon, where I’ve signed up for their affiliate program (which means I get a couple cents if you buy something from that link). But why not go to your public library? Years ago—not long after I discovered my son Conrad chewing on my first edition of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse—I decided I didn’t need to haul around physical books, especially since one of my favorite things is to browse in a library and stumble upon something new. Here’s a picture of our local library, which I’m always happy to go into because Sara was part of the library board when they built it. Good job babe!

The Snohomish Public Library (funny, no books pictured)

Top Picks

• Bewilderment (fiction), Richard Powers, A: How do you describe a book that is unlike anything you’ve ever read? This is sweet story about a father and son on a camping trip, but it’s really about the power of love, and how much better we’d all be if we quite chasing bullshit and just listened to the world around us. Beautiful stuff.

• Crossroads (fiction), Jonathan Franzen, A: I found myself smiling with admiration at multiple points in this book, marveling at Franzen’s ability to capture such a wide range of characters and motivations, and to use his prose to mirror the emotional state of his characters. It explores the lives of five family members, all growing and changing in their relationships to each other, and it has a lot to say about how we relate to siblings, spouses, parents—there’s something there for everyone. Because the father is an assistant pastor, many of the characters also grapple with their relationship with God. This stuff usually sets my teeth on edge, but Franzen pulls it off: these are real people struggling to figure the world out, and they just happen to be using their idea of God to do that. For this lifelong atheist to find this tolerable, even interesting, is a real testament to the quality of his writing.

• The Overstory (fiction), Richard Powers, A: An epic of how to love our natural world. He starts with a series of beautifully realized but seemingly disconnected stories, then weaves them all together into a really amazing story that also happens to offer a way of thinking about how we treat our natural world.

• How to Change Your Mind (non-fiction), Michael Pollan, A: From the time I picked up a Carlos Castaneda book off my dad’s bookshelf when I was a kid, I’ve been intrigued by the idea that psychedelics could offer a glimpse into parts of consciousness that simply aren’t available to our rational minds, so I guess I was primed to like this book, but it was so much better than I expected. If you have any curiosity at all about hallucinogens and altered forms of consciousness, I’d highly recommend this one. Pollan isn’t a “druggie”; he ventures into understanding and trying LSD and psylocibin mushrooms very cautiously, and he digs deep into the science around their effects. In the end, he’s really asking us to think differently about consciousness.

• Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (nonfiction), Patrick Radden Keefe, A-: He’s such a good story teller that sometimes you think you’re reading a novel, a novel about this family who pursued riches and hid behind a veneer of lies and just happened to release a product that has proved to be on of the biggest scourges of the century. Radden Keefe makes the Sacklers and their story the focus—and that ends up draining some of the outrage out of this travesty, this terrible crime committed against people. I could have used a bit more outrage, but I sure learned a lot and I’ll never look at a drug ad the same again.

• Savage Gods (memoir), Paul Kingsnorth, A-: Holy shit, this is a singular book, a searingly honest exploration of one man’s quest for self-knowledge and insight. If you’re at all prone to self-examination (as I am), you’ll have to marvel at the depths this man goes to call himself on his own lies and self-delusions.

• Station Eleven (fiction), Emily St. John Mandel, A: How can a book about a pandemic be so beautiful, so hopeful? You’ve got to read this one to fully appreciate what we’ve been through in the last few years (and how lucky we’ve been).

• Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (non-fiction), Michael Pollan, A. If you’re interested in understanding the complex dynamics by which we all put food on our tables, this is your book. Pollan digs deep into four different realms of food production in his quest to make us more conscious of the choices we make about eating.

• Commonwealth (fiction), Ann Patchett, A. I just love Ann Patchett’s human storytelling. A solid, satisfying read.

• Run (fiction), Ann Patchett, A. See above! Different story, same quality.

• This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage (essay collection), Ann Patchett, B-: This one is a mixed bag: there are some real good pieces (title essay for one), but others are pretty boring.

• The Plot (fiction), Jean Hanff Korelitz, B: This one is spellbinding and hard to put down (I read it in 2 days), but the contrived plot twists and an ending I saw coming too far in advance made this one a bit disappointing, especially after Malcolm Gladwell claimed it was his favorite book of 2021.

• Let Me Tell You What I Mean (essays), Joan Didion, B+: The early stories are solid, tight, concise, sparkling—but the stuff from later in her career is baggy and a bit superficial.

• Orphan X (fiction), Gregg Hurwitz, A: I finally burned out on Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon books and was looking for a new thriller when I happened upon this one from Hurwitz. This is just pure escapism, exactly what you’re looking for when you pick up a thriller. I’d compare it to Jack Reacher and Robert Ludlum novels (yeah, one’s a character, the other an author, but you know what I mean).

• Klara and the Sun (fiction), Kazuo Ishiguro, A-: This one almost didn’t pass my 50-page rule (see below), but I kept at it and was amply rewarded by this quiet but powerful story about the connection between humans and the machines they create.

Here’s that poll again, in case you’re inspired now:

DNF

I’ve got a 50 page rule: if a novel hasn’t grabbed me by the time I hit 50 pages, I set it down. There are just too many good books out there to waste my time. Here are a few that just didn’t thrill me and just went into the DNF pile:

• Hail Mary (novel, SciFi), Andy Weir: I got bored with the repetition and lack of plot advancement.

• Will (autobiography of Will Smith): I wanted to see how ghost writer Mark Manson worked with him on this, but I simply am not interested enough in Smith.

• The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood (novel) -- the science fiction parts just weren't doing it for me, just not interesting, but nicely written, very confident style--she's confident that she's telling you enough and leaves a lot out, inviting you to discover more. that's interesting

• Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro — there’s nothing wrong with this book, just that it never really drew me in, never made me feel compelled to find out what would happen with the characters.

It occurs to me, I apply some version of my 50-page rule to just about everything: newsletters, tv shows, movies. If I don’t like it, I move on. If I like it, I share it. I hope you’ll do the same: hit the Share button if you like it enough to send to a friend—and for pity sakes Unsubscribe if you don’t.