I learned about this book from a blog post by Robin Sloan. That piqued my interest and led me to this excellent 90-minute talk by the author, which covers many of the most interesting points from the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_beSe2cLQI.
In short, Ward believes that the seven books …
[Read More]Here are all the books I read in 2025:
January 2025
February 2025
March 2025
This book was excellent – a biography of four men, their friendship, work, and faith. They were C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams. For years, they met (mostly in Lewis’s home, The Kilns, or at a pub called The Eagle and Child, which they called The Bird and …
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This book sat on my nightstand for nearly two years, and I read a page here and there. It was broken into small sections, and reading it that way worked well.
Asimov was born January 2, 1920 in Russia. But fully culturally American. He says he cares about truth more than appearing vain. I don’t know about the truth part, but he certainly appears …
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I read about half of this. It was good, but I needed to return it and got what I wanted to out of it. Here are my notes:
“To tell the story of those to whom we are heirs is to write a long preface to our own life stories.” (Preface)
The LXX came from …
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I read this in bits while waiting on long-running computer processes, and it was a good choice for that. I like the premise (LOTS OF SPOILERS FOLLOW): Students in a survival class must complete a final exam, living for a few days (up to a couple of weeks) on a remote planet. They don’t know anything about the planet and must pack for …
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This was just fun and not super deep. It had the feel of a YA novel. Here’s a quick synopsis (many spoilers!): Diego is working, digging a hole, when he uncovers a box the size of a coffin. Long story short, it’s some kind of bridge to other dimensions, and “aliens” (really just people from other dimensions, I think) keep coming …
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DFW had been working on this book for over a decade when he killed himself. He left behind the work in progress, somewhat neatly organized for his surviving wife and editors to turn into something. So it’s incomplete, and you can tell. People reviewed this book like it’s still a work of genius, but I struggled to complete it. It …
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In the intro, Saunders says that some of his happiest, most satisfying moments have come while teaching a particular English class to MFA students at Syracuse University. So, he turned that course into this book. In it, there are seven short stories written by four Russian masters in the 19th century. They are:
The following is nothing but spoilers! This book was decent (B+, I would say), with themes of memory and time travel.
Maggie is in her 80s. She wakes up in a bathtub with a man named Hasan asking her questions. Her husband Stan is in a memory care center with demensia, and Hasan is trying to get information about something Stanley knows. In …
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