Non-Work Reading 2023

2023/12

• The Last Thing He Told Me. Dave. Simple, short thriller about an apparent startup tech leader who's gone missing and left his wife with her stepdaughter.

2023/10

• Madhouse at the End of the Earth. Sancton. Non-fiction. Story of the first over-winter expedition in Antarctica, when the Belgica and her crew became stuck in the ice. Much more to this story about depression and insanity than most other polar tales. The trip is also somewhat notable for being Roald Amundsen's first polar expedition, as first mate.
• Murder at Queen's Landing. Penrose. Wrexford & Sloane mystery #4.
• Flyboys. Bradley. Non-fiction. Same author as Flags of our Fathers. The book is framed around seven US aviators involved in the fighting around Iwo Jima and Chichi Jima, most of whom are shot down, captured, tortured, executed, and then cooked & eaten. But the book spends a lot of time canvasing the larger Pacific war with a focus on aviation, starting from well beforehand in Japanese history and going through to the Japanese surrender and war crimes trials afterward.
• Murder at Kensington Palace. Penrose. Wrexford & Sloane mystery #3.
• Hold the Dark. Giraldi. Thriller interleaving wolves and mysticism in the Alaskan wilderness.
• Sea of Glory. Philbrick. Non-fiction. Story of the US Exploring Expedition, a huge undertaking to chart the northwest US coast and Pacific islands, as well as explore Antarctica. Although coincident within days of other expeditions that also confirmed the truth of an Antarctic continent, this expedition mapped much more of it. Overall the expedition was a huge, sustained boost to science in the relatively new country and returned home with tremendous achievements. But it was overshadowed by rampant strife between the commander and basically everybody else, resulting in numerous courts martial. The expedition's treatment of many of the natives encountered was also frequently violent and excessively so.

2023/09

• Mayflower. Philbrick. Non-fiction. Chronicles the Pilgrims' journey to North America, settlement at Plymouth, and the development of New England through to shortly after Philip's War.
• Murder at Half Moon Gate. Penrose. Wrexford & Sloane mystery #2.
• Murder on Black Swan Lane. Penrose. Wrexford & Sloane mystery #1.
• Babel. Kuang.
• Shutter Island. Lehane.
• The Twyford Code. Hallett.
• Small Mercies. Lehane. An action crime thriller about the 1974 desegregation of Boston high schools and the stupefying levels of racism prevalent in Southie. The book is a bit heavy handed at times in spelling out how dumb and self-defeating is the racism, setting poor people against other poor people. But there's a compelling mystery in the surface plot that keeps it moving. The protagonist is also mostly enjoyable, a middle aged women out there kicking ass. But she's also a complex, not fully sympathetic character in her ingrained prejudices and proscribed outlook on life.
• Stella Maris McCarthy.
• The Passenger McCarthy.

2023/08

• The Last Stand. Philbrick. Non-fiction. Account of Battle of Little Bighorn, the months leading up to it, and some of the aftermath.
• Maisie Dobbs. Winspear. Post-WW1 English countryside mystery.
• The White Lady. Winspear. English mystery moving between the two world wars.
• Killers of the Flower Moon. Grann. Non-fiction.
• The Wright Brothers. McCullough. Non-fiction.
• The Long Flight Home. Hlad. Young adult novel about the early stages of WWII from the English perspective, and a scheme to airdrop homing pigeons into France for citizens there to send back intelligence. Centered around a pair of teen protagonists, the book is fairly saccharine and a bit silly at times. The closing chapters though are unexpectedly hard hitting. There's a touching section around a monk supporting French resistance. Heaviest though is the teens' tragic post-war story of missed connections and lost opportunities. So the book overall ends somewhat more substantially than it felt for much of its length.
• Empire of Ice and Stone. Levy. Non-fiction. Story of the Karluk and the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913, which coincidentally wound up following much of the odyssey of the Jeanette and Captain De Long.

2023/07

• Kingdom of Ice. Sides. Non-fiction. Story of the Jeanette and the US Arctic Expedition of 1879 which attempted to reach the North Pole from the Bering Strait, most of whose crew were lost.
• Transcription. Atkinson. Story of English WWII spies working to ensnare Nazi sympathizers. Not nearly as good a book as Atkinson's Life After Life or A God In Ruins. This one is interesting enough but there's a late twist for which the basis has been set but feels unfair, unearned, and potentially changes the reader's sympathies a fair bit.
• Dead Wake. Larson. Non-fiction. Documents the sinking of the Lusitania.
• The Wager. Grann. Non-fiction. Recounts the travails of the Wager, a British warship, and its attempt to sail around Cape Horn in the 1740s.
• The Gone World. Sweterlitsch. Great horror sci-fi about time travel, alien contact, life's choices.
• The Trackers. Frazier. A quiet, subtly complicated story of entangled loves amid the Great Depression, set across the mid-west, southeast, and northwest.
• The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914. McCullough. Non-fiction.
• Eversion. Reynolds. Science-fiction of a doomed expedition to Europa.
• Dust off the Bones. Howarth. Historical fiction set at the end of Australian colonization.
• Only Killers and Thieves. Howarth. Historical fiction set at the end of Australian colonization.
• The Last Heir to Blackwood Library. Fox. Paranormal house fiction with a healthy dose of occultism and familial dynasties. Feels Victorian in many ways but is set in the mid-20s, so I guess it's just a few years post-Victorian. The story is familiar and never too surprising, but it's reasonable light entertainment. I do like the opening vignette of the anchoress of the abbey.
• The Deep. Solomon. A dream like fantasy of an underwater nation populated by the children of pregnant women thrown overboard from African slave ships.

2023/06

• Sorrowland. Solomon. A captivating tale of black power and nature set in a vaguely defined late 20th century. The tone shifts maybe half or two-thirds through, and I thought the first part was stronger. The book begins as a very compelling story mixing black independence, cult communes, political repression, and back to nature movements with a vague backlight of mysticism and questions about the narrator. After that it becomes much more overtly sci-fi, part X-Files and part Predator. This section isn't particularly bad per se, but it's very different. The characters and setting continue to make it original, but otherwise it's a somewhat unsatisfying ending.
• Poster Girl. Roth. Entertaining enough sci-fi about surveillance and technology. Both story and feel are reminiscent of a young adult version of Monae's The Memory Librarian.
• Far from the Light of Heaven. Thompson.
• Something Wicked This Way Comes. Bradbury. A small story about two boys, one's father, and the dark carnival that comes to town. I confess to being much less drawn to the story itself than I expected, but the grammar and word play is beautiful.

2023/05

• Aurora. Robinson. Quiet, meandering sci-fi tale of a colony ship voyage.
• The Mountain in the Sea. Nayler. Very good Asian-Pacific oriented science fiction about first contact with a civilization of octopuses.
• Across the Sand. Howey. A sequel to Sand, but not as interesting. There's less focus on the sand diving here and more about gangs and post-apocalyptic strife. Admittedly, several of the gang leaders are bit more nuanced than I expected. There are also several sequences that would make really good movie scenes if done well---sarfers sailing and fighting across the dunes, and so on.
• The Collector of Lost Things. Page. Historical fiction about a golden age trip to the Arctic looking for the last of the Great Awks.
• Salt. Page. A quiet story about growing up in slowly crumbling English marshes.
• The Night Ship. Kidd. Historical fiction augmented with supernatural elements interleaving the true 1628 sinking and subsequent tragedy of the Batavia with a small boy living on that same Australian island group in the late '80s. There are substantial supernatural components throughout the tale, but mostly from a child's perspective and not necessarily "real" per se.
• Things in Jars. Kidd. Victorian-era adventuring detective story with supernatural elements---a ghost companion, powerful merrows---alongside the more worldly elements of class, body stealing, and so on.

2023/04

• Dead Silence. Barnes.
• The Clockmaker's Daughter. Morton.
• Hell and Back. Johnson. Longmire #18.
• Daughter of the Morning Star. Johnson. Longmire #17.

2023/03

• Next to Last Stand. Johnson. Longmire #16.
• Bad Actors. Herron. Slough House #8.
• Land of Wolves. Johnson. Longmire #15.
• Desert Star. Connelly. Bosch book #24, also featuring Renee Ballard.
• The Memory Librarian. Monáe. Excellent collection of short stories and novellas focused on queer life in a repressive sci-fi regime, with significant doses of fantasm thrown in.
• Slough House. Herron. Slough House #7.
• Depth of Winter. Johnson. Longmire #14.
• The Western Star. Johnson. Longmire #13.
• An Obvious Fact. Johnson. Longmire #12.
• Dry Bones. Johnson. Longmire #11.
• Any Other Name. Johnson. Longmire #10.

2023/02

• No Middle Name. Child. Reacher short story collection.
• No Plan B. Child & Child. Reacher #27.
• Shaman. Robinson.
• Joe Country. Herron. Slough House #6.
• The List. Herron. Slough House #5.5, a very good short story.
• A Serpent's Tooth. Johnson. Longmire #9.
• As the Crow Flies. Johnson. Longmire #8.
• Better Off Dead. Child & Child. Reacher #26.
• Hell Is Empty. Johnson. Longmire #7.
• Junkyard Dogs. Johnson. Longmire #6.
• One Day All This Will Be Yours. Tchaikovsky.

2023/01

• The Dark Horse. Johnson. Longmire #5.
• Another Man's Moccasins. Johnson. Longmire #4.
• Way Station. Simak.
• Kindness Goes Unpunished. Johnson. Longmire #3.
• London Rules. Herron. Slough House #5.
• The Sentinel. Child & Child. Reacher #25.
• Sinking Suspicions. Hoklotubbe. Sadie Walela #3.
• The American Cafe. Hoklotubbe. Sadie Walela #2.
• Deception on All Accounts. Hoklotubbe. Sadie Walela #1.
• Death Without Company. Johnson. Longmire #2.
• The Cold Dish. Johnson. Longmire #1.