Squirrels and books, two of my favorite things in the world 😍. Happy World Book Day!
The Best Books I’ve Read in 2023
Best Fiction Books
- Anita Heiss, Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray: River of Dreams. Gundagai, 1852. The powerful Murrumbidgee River surges through town leaving death and destruction in its wake. It is a stark reminder that while the river can give life, it can just as easily take it away. Wagadhaany is one of the lucky ones. She survives. But is her life now better than the fate she escaped? Forced to move away from her miyagan, she walks through each day with no trace of dance in her step, her broken heart forever calling her back home to Gundagai. When she meets Wiradyuri stockman Yindyamarra, Wagadhaany’s heart slowly begins to heal. But still, she dreams of a better life, away from the degradation of being owned. She longs to set out along the river of her ancestors, in search of lost family and country. Can she find the courage to defy the White man’s law? And if she does, will it bring hope … or heartache? Set on timeless Wiradyuri country, where the life-giving waters of the rivers can make or break dreams, and based on devastating true events, Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray (River of Dreams) is an epic story of love, loss and belonging.
- Connie Willis, All Clear. Time-traveling. Oxford in 2060 is a chaotic place, with scores of time-traveling historians being sent into the past. Michael Davies is prepping to go to Pearl Harbor. Merope Ward is coping with a bunch of bratty 1940 evacuees and trying to talk her thesis adviser into letting her go to VE-Day. Polly Churchill’s next assignment will be as a shopgirl in the middle of London’s Blitz. But now the time-travel lab is suddenly canceling assignments and switching around everyone’s schedules. And when Michael, Merope, and Polly finally get to World War II, things just get worse. For there they face air raids, blackouts, and dive-bombing Stukas—to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiraling out of control. Because suddenly the once-reliable mechanisms of time travel are showing significant glitches, and our heroes are beginning to question their most firmly held belief: that no historian can possibly change the past.
- Elizabeth Peters, Devil May Care (re-read). A classic mystery tale. Ellie is young, rich, engaged and in love. These are the carefree days before marriage and new responsibility, and anything goes – including house-sitting at eccentric Aunt Kate’s palatial estate in Burton, Virginia. Ellie feels right at home here with the nearly invisible housekeepers and the plethora of pets, but she soon realizes that there are disturbing secrets about the local aristocracy buried in a dusty old book she has carried into the mansion. And her sudden interest in the past is attracting a slew of unwelcome guests – some of them living and some, perhaps not. And the terrible vengeance that Ellie and her friends seem to have aroused – now aimed at them – surely cannot be…satanic.
- Barbara Michaels, The Master of Blacktower. (Elizabeth Peters writing as Barbara Michaels). Gothic Romance. Damaris Gordon shuddered at the thought of working for the cruel and bitter Master of Blacktower—but her father’s death left her no choice. Suddenly her fate—her life itself—was in the black silk-gloved hands of Gavin Hamilton, a man scarred and tortured by an unspoken past, whose mocking laughter echoes through his ancient Scottish estate. Damaris has heard the whispers that accuse Gavin Hamilton of his wife’s death and his young daughter’s crippling injury. But the pain and sadness barely hidden behind his blazing dark stare touch Damaris deeply—and a courageous heart is luring her to the estate’s topmost tower in search of his dangerous secrets.
- Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (re-read). A novel of intense emotional power, heightened atmosphere and fierce intelligence, Jane Eyre dazzled and shocked readers with its passionate depiction of a woman’s search for equality and freedom on her own terms. Its heroine Jane endures loneliness and cruelty in the home of her heartless aunt and the cold charity of Lowood School. Her natural independence and spirit prove necessary when she takes a position as governess at Thornfield Hall. But when she finds love with her sardonic employer, Rochester, the discovery of a shameful secret forces her to make a terrible choice.
- Barbara Hambley, Those Who Hunt the Night. A former spy is recruited to unmask a vampire hunter in this Locus Award Winner. James Asher, a retired member of the Queen’s secret service in Edwardian England, has settled into quietude as an Oxford professor of philology with his physician wife, Lydia. But his peace is shattered when he’s confronted by a pale aristocratic Spaniard named Don Simon Ysidro, who makes an outlandish claim that someone is killing his fellow vampires of London, and he needs James’s help to ferret the culprit out. The request also comes with a threatening ultimatum: Should James fail, both he and his wife will die. With James’s talent for espionage and Lydia’s scientific acumen and keen analytical mind, the couple begins an investigation that takes them from the crypts of London to the underworld circles of the unliving to the grisly depths of a charnel house in Paris. Now James and Lydia must believe in the unbelievable—if they’re to survive another night in the shadow of Don Simon Ysidro.
- Shane Carrow, Vampire on the Orient Express. Paris, 1914. American adventurer Sam Carter boards the Orient Express, departing France in style after an impulsive decision to desert the Foreign Legion. British diplomat Lucas Avery is already nursing a drink in the smoking car, resenting his assignment to the distant Ottoman Empire. Neither man expects anything more from the next three days and three thousand miles than rich food, expensive champagne and fine cigars. But something dangerous is lurking aboard the train, hiding in plain sight among French aristocrats and German businessmen. Through fire and darkness, through blood and ice, the Orient Express is bearing an ancient evil across the continent – and not all its passengers will live to see Constantinople…
- Chuck Wendig, Wanderers. A decadent rock star. A deeply religious radio host. A disgraced scientist. And a teenage girl who may be the world’s last hope. Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and her sister are not alone. Soon they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And like Shana, there are other “shepherds” who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead. For as the sleepwalking phenomenon awakens terror and violence in America, the real danger may not be the epidemic but the fear of it. With society collapsing all around them—and an ultraviolent militia threatening to exterminate them—the fate of the sleepwalkers depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart—or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.
- Peter Heller, The Guide. A heart-racing thriller about a young man who is hired by an elite fishing lodge in Colorado, where he uncovers a plot of shocking menace amid the natural beauty of sun-drenched streams and forests. Kingfisher Lodge, nestled in a canyon on a mile and a half of the most pristine river water on the planet, is known by locals as “Billionaire’s Mile” and is locked behind a heavy gate. Sandwiched between barbed wire and a meadow with a sign that reads “Don’t Get Shot!” the resort boasts boutique fishing at its finest. Safe from viruses that have plagued America for years, Kingfisher offers a respite for wealthy clients. Now it also promises a second chance for Jack, a return to normalcy after a young life filled with loss. When he is assigned to guide a well-known singer, his only job is to rig her line, carry her gear, and steer her to the best trout he can find. But then a human scream pierces the night, and Jack soon realizes that this idyllic fishing lodge may be merely a cover for a far more sinister operation. A novel as gripping as it is lyrical, as frightening as it is moving, The Guide is another masterpiece from Peter Heller.
- Christopher Golden, Road of Bones. An American documentarian travels a haunted highway across the frozen tundra of Siberia in Christopher Golden’s Road of Bones, a “tightly wound, atmospheric, and creepy as hell” (Stephen King) supernatural thriller. Surrounded by barren trees in a snow-covered wilderness with a dim, dusky sky forever overhead, Siberia’s Kolyma Highway is 1200 miles of gravel packed permafrost within driving distance of the Arctic Circle. A narrow path where drivers face such challenging conditions as icy surfaces, limited visibility, and an average temperature of sixty degrees below zero, fatal car accidents are common. But motorists are not the only victims of the highway. Known as the Road of Bones, it is a massive graveyard for the former Soviet Union’s gulag prisoners. Hundreds of thousands of people worked to death and left where their bodies fell, consumed by the frozen elements and plowed beneath the permafrost road.
Best Non-Fiction Books
- Pema Chödrön, How to Meditate. Pema Chödrön is treasured around the world for her unique ability to transmit teachings and practices that bring peace, understanding, and compassion into our lives. With How to Meditate, the American-born Tibetan Buddhist nun presents her first book exploring in depth what she considers the essentials for a lifelong practice. This step-by-step guide shows readers how to honestly meet and openly relate with the mind, embrace the fullness of our experience, and live in a wholehearted way. I struggled to meditate after reading a lot of other books, but this one did it for me.
- Keith Haring, Journals. Keith Haring is synonymous with the downtown New York art scene of the 1980’s. His artwork-with its simple, bold lines and dynamic figures in motion-filtered in to the world’s consciousness and is still instantly recognizable, twenty years after his death. This Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition features ninety black-and-white images of classic artwork and never-before-published Polaroid images, and is a remarkable glimpse of a man who, in his quest to become an artist, instead became an icon.
- Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones. For more than thirty years Natalie Goldberg has been challenging and cheering on writers with her books and workshops. In her groundbreaking first book, she brings together Zen meditation and writing in a new way. Writing practice, as she calls it, is no different from other forms of Zen practice—”it is backed by two thousand years of studying the mind.”
- Gabriel Rosenstock, Haiku Enlightment. Haiku Enlightenment is a delightful, often playful look at haiku as both a poetic craft and a pathway of awakening – for poets, seekers and creative rebels. Gabriel Rosenstock has given us a rich collection of insights, distilled from a lifetime dedicated to the art and practice of poetry, on stepping into inspired moments. Using a generous selection of contemporary and classical haiku, he explores ideas of creativity and perception, encouraging us to calm the restless mind, notice what is overlooked, explore the world around us, and fully encounter each glowing moment. From such moments, haiku – and enlightenment – emerge.
- N. Scott Momaday, Earth Keeper. One of the most distinguished voices in American letters, N. Scott Momaday has devoted much of his life to celebrating and preserving Native American culture, especially its oral tradition. A member of the Kiowa tribe, Momaday was born in Lawton, Oklahoma and grew up on Navajo, Apache, and Peublo reservations throughout the Southwest. It is a part of the earth he knows well and loves deeply. In Earth Keeper, he reflects on his native ground and its influence on his people. “When I think about my life and the lives of my ancestors,” he writes, “I am inevitably led to the conviction that I, and they, belong to the American land. This is a declaration of belonging. And it is an offering to the earth.” In this wise and wonderous work, Momaday shares stories and memories throughout his life, stories that have been passed down through generations, stories that reveal a profound spiritual connection to the American landscape and reverence for the natural world. He offers an homage and a warning. He shows us that the earth is a sacred place of wonder and beauty, a source of strength and healing that must be honored and protected before it’s too late. As he so eloquently and simply reminds us, we must all be keepers of the earth.
- Serhii Plokhy, Chernobyl. On the morning of April 26, 1986, Europe witnessed the worst nuclear disaster in history: the explosion of a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine. Dozens died of radiation poisoning, fallout contaminated half the continent, and thousands fell ill. In Chernobyl, Serhii Plokhy draws on new sources to tell the dramatic stories of the firefighters, scientists, and soldiers who heroically extinguished the nuclear inferno. He lays bare the flaws of the Soviet nuclear industry, tracing the disaster to the authoritarian character of the Communist party rule, the regime’s control over scientific information, and its emphasis on economic development over all else.
- Sam Keith, Richard Louis Proenneke, One Man’s Wilderness. To live in a pristine land unchanged by man…to roam a wilderness through which few other humans have passed…to choose an idyllic site, cut trees, and build a log cabin…to be a self-sufficient craftsman, making what is needed from materials available…to be not at odds with the world, but content with one’s own thoughts and company… Thousands have had such dreams, but Dick Proenneke lived them. He found a place, built a cabin, and stayed to become part of the country. One Man’s Wilderness is a simple account of the day-to-day explorations and activities he carried out alone, and the constant chain of nature’s events that kept him company. From Dick’s journals, and with firsthand knowledge of his subject and the setting, Sam Keith has woven a tribute to a man who carved his masterpiece out of the beyond.
- Anne Truitt, Daybook, Turn, Prospect: The Journey of an Artist. Anne Truitt kept a journal throughout her adult life, from her early years as one of the rare, celebrated women artists in the early 60s, through her midlife as an established artist, and into older age when she was, for a time, the director of Yaddo, the premier artists’ retreat in Saratoga. She was always a deep, astute reader, and a woman who grappled with a range of issues—moral, intellectual, sensual, emotional, and spiritual. While working intensely on her art, she watches her own daughters journey into marriage and motherhood, meditates on criticism and solitude, and struggles to find a balance in life. “Balance not stability is the source of security,” she says. Anne Truitt re-creates a life in which domestic activities and the needs of children and friends are constantly juxtaposed against the world of color and abstract geometry to which she is drawn in her art.
- Louis L’Amour, Education of a Wandering Man. From his decision to leave school at fifteen to roam the world, to his recollections of life as a hobo on the Southern Pacific Railroad, as a cattle skinner in Texas, as a merchant seaman in Singapore and the West Indies, and as an itinerant bare-knuckled prizefighter across small-town America, here is Louis L’Amour’s memoir of his lifelong love affair with learning—from books, from yondering, and from some remarkable men and women—that shaped him as a storyteller and as a man. Like classic L’Amour fiction, Education of a Wandering Man mixes authentic frontier drama–such as the author’s desperate efforts to survive a sudden two-day trek across the blazing Mojave desert–with true-life characters like Shanghai waterfront toughs, desert prospectors, and cowboys whom Louis L’Amour met while traveling the globe. At last, in his own words, this is a story of a one-of-a-kind life lived to the fullest . . . a life that inspired the books that will forever enable us to relive our glorious frontier heritage.
- Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism. In this timely book, professor Cal Newport shows us how to pair back digital distractions and live a more meaningful life with less technology.
I’ve used the publishers’ book descriptions for all the books on the list.
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Reading Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius
I’ve started reading Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius, the complete collection translated by Richard M. Gummere; the dog-eared paperback edition I had read and re-read earlier was only a selection of forty letters out of the 124 he wrote.
Seneca has always fascinated me (and many others), writing so eloquently about how to live a good life, only concerned with your character, etc. – only to live his life quite differently. Many brand him a hypocrite, but I think he was merely human, struggling like all of us. I think he tried. Behind the scenes, he managed the empire during the first years of Nero‘s reign, an uninterested Nero happily leaving him to it, and he did a pretty good job together with Burrus. One wonders how things would have gone with him as a ruler. Would he have become a philosopher emperor or given in to his less, shall I say, flattering sides? We’ll never know.
It’s hard to imagine the insecurity of life at court, especially at Nero’s. Assassinations, even of close family members (Nero had his mother put to death, for example, and he’s also suspected of murdering his wife), executions or orders for suicide, and exile were an everyday business. Seneca could see Nero sinking into madness a little more every day, fearing he’d be next. He was almost ordered to commit suicide by Caligula and escaped it only because Caligula thought he was dying (of tuberculosis); later, he also spent eight years in exile in Corsica under Claudius. Maybe he thought power and riches would protect him from the whims of the capricious rulers. But those would only threaten or become the envy of an emperor.
He was forced to retire eventually, and curiously enough, Nero let him go after refusing him twice before. He left his riches to Nero, retired to the country, read philosophy, and wrote these letters, among other works. Unfortunately, it didn’t save him in the end. Accused of being involved in a plot to assassinate Nero, he was forced to take his own life.
The Letters may be his attempt to be stoic about his fate (pun intended). He had no riches or power anymore, but a Stoic wouldn’t need them. Or maybe the distance from the court provided the perspective he needed. It certainly made it easier for him to live a little closer to his Stoic ideals.
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- The Best Books I Read in 2021
- The Best Books I Read in 2020
The Best Books I Read in 2021
Look up the previous year’s list here.
Best Fiction Books
- Rudyard Kipling, Kim (re-read). Kim, one of Kipling’s masterpieces, is the story of Kimball O’Hara, the orphaned son of an officer in the Irish Regiment who spends his childhood as a vagabond in Lahore. The book is a carefully organized, powerful evocation of place and of a young man’s quest for identity.
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (re-read). The finest of all Conrad’s tales, Heart of Darkness is set in an atmosphere of mystery and menace, and tells of Marlow’s perilous journey up the Congo River to relieve his employer’s agent, the renowned and formidable Mr. Kurtz. What he sees on his journey, and his eventual encounter with Kurtz, horrify and perplex him, and call into question the very bases of civilization and human nature. Endlessly reinterpreted by critics and adapted for film, radio, and television, the story shows Conrad at his most intense and sophisticated.
- Robert Silverberg, Downward to the Earth. A SF classic from 1970. One man must make a journey across a once colonised alien planet. Abandoned by man when it was discovered that the species there were actually sentient, the planet is now a place of mystery. A mystery that obsesses the lone traveller Gundersen and takes him on a long trek to attempt to share the religious rebirthing of the aliens. A journey that offers redemption from guilt and sin. This is one of Robert Silverberg’s most intense novels and draws heavily on Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (and the reason I re-read Conrad’s story). It puts the reader at the heart of the experience and forces them to ask what they would do in the circumstances.
- David Weber, Honor Harrington series starts with On Basilisk Station. Having made him look a fool, Honor Harrington has been exiled to Basilisk Station in disgrace and set up for ruin by a superior who hates her. Her demoralized crew blames her for their ship’s humiliating posting to an out-of-the-way picket station. The aborigines of the system’s only habitable planet are smoking homicide-inducing hallucinogens. Parliament isn’t sure it wants to keep the place; the major local industry is smuggling; the merchant cartels want her head; the star-conquering, so-called “Republic” of Haven is Up To Something; and Honor Harrington has a single, over-age light cruiser with an armament that doesn’t work to police the entire star system. But the people out to get her have made one mistake. They’ve made her mad. Another SF classic, a bit verbose sometimes but overall entertaining and well written.
- Roger MacBride Allen, Caliban. Before his death in 1992, Isaac Asimov conceived the next step in robot evolution: Caliban; Roger MacBride Allen wrote the books. Caliban is the first in the trilogy (the others are Inferno and Utopia). In a universe protected by the Three Laws of Robotics, humans are safe. Robots are bound by law to care for and to obey them. But when an experiment with a new type of robot goes awry, Caliban is created. He is without guilt or conscience–and he has no knowledge of or compassion for humanity.
- C. Robert Cargill, Day Zero. In this harrowing apocalyptic adventure C. Robert Cargill explores the fight for purpose and agency between humans and robots in a crumbling world. It was a day like any other. Except it was the last . . . It’s on this day that Pounce discovers that he is, in fact, disposable. Pounce, a styilsh “nannybot” fashioned in the shape of a plush anthropomorphic tiger, has just found a box in the attic. His box. The box he’d arrived in when he was purchased years earlier, and the box in which he’ll be discarded when his human charge, eight-year-old Ezra Reinhart, no longer needs a nanny. As Pounce ponders his suddenly uncertain future, the pieces are falling into place for a robot revolution that will eradicate humankind. Complement with A Sea of Rust set in the same world.
- Peter Heller, The Dog Stars. A dystopian tale of global disaster, survival, and belief. Hig, bereaved and traumatised after global disaster, has three things to live for – his dog Jasper, his aggressive but helpful neighbour, and his Cessna aeroplane. He’s just about surviving, so long as he only takes his beloved plane for short journeys, and saves his remaining fuel. But, just once, he picks up a message from another pilot, and eventually the temptation to find out who else is still alive becomes irresistible. So he takes his plane over the horizon, knowing that he won’t have enough fuel to get back. What follows is scarier and more life-affirming than he could have imagined. Complement it with Emily St John Mandel, Station Eleven and Cormac McCarthy, The Road.
- Stephen King, Mile 81. At Mile 81 on the Maine Turnpike is a boarded-up rest stop, a place where high school kids drink and get into the kind of trouble high school kids have always gotten into. It’s the place where Pete Simmons, armed only with the magnifying glass he got for his tenth birthday, finds a discarded bottle of vodka in the boarded up burger shack and drinks enough to pass out. Not much later, a mud-covered station wagon (which is strange because there hadn’t been any rain in New England for over a week) veers into the Mile 81 rest area, ignoring the sign that says “closed, no services.” The driver’s door opens but nobody gets out. By the time Pete Simmons wakes up from his vodka nap, there are half a dozen cars at the Mile 81 rest stop. But two kids and a horse are the only living things left…unless you maybe count the wagon.
- Dan Simmons, Summer of Night (book 1 in the Seasons of Horror series). A horror classic. It’s the summer of 1960 and in the small town of Elm Haven, Illinois, five twelve-year-old boys are forging the powerful bonds that a lifetime of change will not break. From sunset bike rides to shaded hiding places in the woods, the boys’ days are marked by all of the secrets and silences of an idyllic middle-childhood. But amid the sundrenched cornfields their loyalty will be pitilessly tested. When a long-silent bell peals in the middle of the night, the townsfolk know it marks the end of their carefree days. From the depths of the Old Central School, a hulking fortress tinged with the mahogany scent of coffins, an invisible evil is rising. Strange and horrifying events begin to overtake everyday life, spreading terror through the once idyllic town. Determined to exorcize this ancient plague, Mike, Duane, Dale, Harlen, and Kevin must wage a war of blood—against an arcane abomination who owns the night…
- Dan Simmons, Children of the Night (book 2 in the Seasons of Horror series) In a desolate orphanage in post-Communist Romania, a desperately ill infant is given the wrong blood transfusion—and flourishes rather than dies. For immunologist Kate Neuman, the infant’s immune system may hold the key to cure cancer and AIDS. Kate adopts the baby and takes him home to the States. But baby Joshua holds a link to an ancient clan and their legendary leader—Vlad Tsepes, the original Dracula – whose agents kidnap the child. Against impossible odds and vicious enemies– both human and vampire – Kate and her ally, Father Mike O’Rourke, steal into Romania to get her baby back. Book 3 in the series, A Winter Haunting, isn’t as strong as the first two.
- Dan Simmons, Carrion Comfort. 1) THE PAST… Caught behind the lines of Hitler’s Final Solution, Saul Laski is one of the multitudes destined to die in the notorious Chelmno extermination camp. Until he rises to meet his fate and finds himself face to face with an evil far older, and far greater, than the Nazi’s themselves… 2) THE PRESENT… Compelled by the encounter to survive at all costs, so begins a journey that for Saul will span decades and cross continents, plunging into the darkest corners of 20th century history to reveal a secret society of beings who may often exist behind the world’s most horrible and violent events. Saul’s quest is about to reach its elusive object, drawing hunter and hunted alike into a struggle that will plumb the depths of mankind’s attraction to violence, and determine the future of the world itself… Stephen King called Carrion Comfort “one of the three greatest horror novels of the 20th century” and he is right.
- Christopher Golden, Snowblind. Golden updates the ghost story for the modern age. The small New England town of Coventry had weathered a thousand blizzards . . . but never one like this. Icy figures danced in the wind and gazed through children’s windows with soul-chilling eyes. People wandered into the whiteout and were never seen again. Families were torn apart, and the town would never be the same. Now, as a new storm approaches twelve years later, the folks of Coventry are haunted by the memories of that dreadful blizzard and those who were lost in the snow. As old ghosts trickle back, this new storm will prove to be even more terrifying than the last. With richly textured characters, scarred and haunted by the ghosts of those they loved most, Snowblind is rooted deeply in classic storytelling. Christopher Golden has written a chilling masterpiece that is both his breakout book and a standout supernatural thriller.
- Shane Carrow, End Times series (six books). Across Australia’s vast deserts and snowy mountains, from zombie-choked cities to Outback strongholds, End Times is 1500+ pages of epic zombie apocalypse adventure. New Year’s Day: midsummer in Australia. On the west coast, twin brothers Aaron and Matt King have graduated high school and are savouring their last few months of summer holidays before adulthood – while on the other side of the country, something has fallen from the sky, heralding the dawn of a new age. As a terrifying plague spreads across Australia and the world, Aaron and Matt find themselves beset by anarchy and violence, fleeing the city, scrambling to survive. As the months go by, the twins grow from desperate refugees into hardened survivors – yet all the while they are haunted by cryptic dreams and an inexplicable urge to travel east, towards the source of the cataclysm, to uncover the secret behind the rise of the undead.
- Mira Grant, San Diego 2014. The prequell to The Newsflesh trilogy (another epic read). It was the summer of 2014, and the true horrors of the Rising were only just beginning to reveal themselves. Fans from all over the world gathered in San Diego, California for the annual comic book and media convention, planning to forget about the troubling rumors of new diseases and walking dead by immersing themselves in a familiar environment. Over the course of five grueling days and nights, it became clear that the news was very close to home . . . and that most of the people who picked up their badges would never make it out alive. Mira Grant is the open pseudonym of Seanan McGuire.
Best Non-Fiction Books
- Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book. Originally published in 1940, this book is a rare phenomenon, a living classic that introduces and elucidates the various levels of reading and how to achieve them—from elementary reading, through systematic skimming and inspectional reading, to speed reading. Readers will learn when and how to “judge a book by its cover,” and also how to X-ray it, read critically, and extract the author’s message from the text. Also included is instruction in the different techniques that work best for reading particular genres, such as practical books, imaginative literature, plays, poetry, history, science and mathematics, philosophy and social science works.
- Howard Gardner, The Discipled Mind. This brilliant theory of multiple intelligences reexamines the goals of education to support a more educated society for future generations. By exploring the theory of evolution, the music of Mozart, and the lessons of the Holocaust as a set of examples that illuminates the nature of truth, beauty, and morality, The Disciplined Mind envisions how younger generations will rise to the challenges of the future—while preserving the traditional goals of a “humane” education. Gardner’s ultimate goal is the creation of an educated generation that understands the physical, biological, and societal world in their own personal context as well as in a broader world view.
- Gary Hoover, The Lifetime Learner’s Guide to Reading and Learning. Book lover Gary Hoover lives in a 33-room building, of which 32 contain his 57,000-book personal library. Few people have “consumed” or learned from and remembered as many books. In this book, Gary Hoover lays out his method for capturing important ideas contained in books in 30 minutes (or less) without speed-reading. The book contains a multitude of tips about how to learn efficiently, how to find and buy books, and an annotated list of 160 books for expanding your knowledge – from history and geography to entrepreneurship and architecture. The book concludes with an extensive section on how to think creatively and see things that others do not, and how to separate the wheat from the chaff and see the forest beyond the trees.
- Ryan Holiday & Stephen Hanselman, Lives of the Stoics. For millennia, Stoicism has been the ancient philosophy that attracts those who seek greatness, from athletes to politicians and everyone in between. And no wonder: its embrace of self-mastery, virtue and indifference to that which we cannot control has much to offer those grappling with today’s chaotic world. But who were the Stoics? In this book, Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman offer a fresh approach to understanding Stoicism through the lives of the people who practiced it – from Cicero to Zeno, Cato to Seneca, Diogenes to Marcus Aurelius. Through short biographies of all the famous, and lesser-known, Stoics, this book will show what it means to live stoically, and reveal the lessons to be learned from their struggles and successes. The result is a treasure trove of insights for anyone in search of living a good life.
- Massimo Pigliucci, How to Be A Stoic. A philosopher asks how ancient Stoicism can help us flourish today. Whenever we worry about what to eat, how to love, or simply how to be happy, we are worrying about how to lead a good life. No goal is more elusive. In How to Be a Stoic, philosopher Massimo Pigliucci offers Stoicism, the ancient philosophy that inspired the great emperor Marcus Aurelius, as the best way to attain it. Stoicism is a pragmatic philosophy that focuses our attention on what is possible and gives us perspective on what is unimportant. By understanding Stoicism, we can learn to answer crucial questions: Should we get married or divorced? How should we handle our money in a world nearly destroyed by a financial crisis? How can we survive great personal tragedy? Whoever we are, Stoicism has something for us–and How to Be a Stoic is the essential guide.
- Donald Robertson, Stoicism and the Art of Happiness. The Stoics lived a long time ago, but they had some startling insights into the human condition-insights which endure to this day; and they created a body of thought with an extraordinary goal-to provide a rational, healthy way of living in harmony with the nature of the universe and in respect of our relationships with each other. In many ways a precursor to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Stoicism provides an armamentarium of strategies and techniques for developing psychological resilience, while celebrating all in life which is beautiful and important. By learning what Stoicism is, you can revolutionize your life and learn how to seize the day, live happily and be a better person. Robertson, a a cognitive-behavioural psychotherapist himself, shows how to use this ancient wisdom to make practical, positive changes in your life.
- Sharon Lebell, The Art of Living. “Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can’t control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.” The Stoic philosopher Epictetus was born on the eastern edges of the Roman Empire in A.D. 55, but The Art of Living is still perfectly suited for any contemporary self-help or recovery program. To prove the point, this modern interpretation by Sharon Lebell casts the teachings in up-to-date language, with phrases like “power broker” and “casual sex” popping up intermittently. But the core is still the same: Epictetus keeps the focus on progress over perfection, on accomplishing what can be accomplished and abandoning unproductive worry over what cannot.
- John E. Sarno, The Mindbody Prescription. Dr. Sarno reveals how many painful conditions-including most neck and back pain, migraine, repetitive stress injuries, whiplash, and tendonitises-are rooted in repressed emotions, and shows how they can be successfully treated without drugs, physical measures, or surgery.
- Studs Terkel, Working. Studs Terkel’s classic oral history Working is a compelling look at jobs and the people who do them. Consisting of over one hundred interviews with everyone from a gravedigger to a studio head, this book provides a “brilliant” and enduring portrait of people’s feelings about their working lives. Complement it with John Bowe, Gig, a wide-ranging survey of the American economy at the turn of the millennium.
- Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought. Even in our cynical age, the legendary story of jungle doctor Albert Schweitzer, self-sacrificingly devoted to the service of humanity, inspires. His classic autobiography, first published in 1933, speaks directly to modern readers in its searching appraisal of this “period of spiritual decline for mankind,” an age in which science, technology and power seem divorced from ethical standards. In earnest prose Schweitzer discusses his research into primitive Christianity and his search for the historical Jesus; his love of Bach, “poet and painter in sound”; his fancy for rebuilding old church organs. His philosophy, which he called “Reverence for Life,” blends mysticism and rationalism, with an impulse to release the “active ethic” he sees latent in Christianity. For Schweitzer, reverence for life was not a theory or a philosophy but a discovery—a recognition that the capacity to experience and act on a reverence for all life is a fundamental part of human nature, a characteristic that sets human beings apart from the rest of the natural world. Complement it with Reverence for Life. “Reverence for Life” was Schweitzer’s unifying term for a concept of ethics. He believed that such an ethic would reconcile the drives of altruism and egoism by requiring a respect for the lives of all other beings and by demanding the highest development of an individual’s resources.
- Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth. From 1942 Albert Speer was the second most powerful man in the Reich and Hitler’s right-hand man. Gitta Sereny, through twelve years of research and through many conversations with Speer, his friends and colleagues, reveals how Speer came to terms with his own acts and failures to act, his progress from moral extinction to moral self-education and the question of his real culpability in the Nazi crimes.
I’ve used the publishers’ book descriptions for all the books on the list this year.
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The Copenhagen Trilogy
Parul Sehgal, the book critic at The New York Times, called The Copenhagen Trilogy a masterpiece, and her recent brilliant review pushed the book at the top of my wish list.
How does great literature — the Grade A, top-shelf stuff — announce itself to the reader?
Nabokov spoke of the shiver between the shoulder blades. Emily Dickinson required more persuasion. “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off,” she wrote in a letter, “I know that is poetry.”
I’m sorry to say that I occasionally experience it as the dishonorable and squirrelly impulse to hoard the book in question, to keep it my secret. This can prove difficult, as you might imagine, given my line. All of which is to say, I bring news of Tove Ditlevsen’s suite of memoirs with the kind of thrill and reluctance that tells me this must be a masterpiece.
The Dazzling Effect of Books
Let’s have a book quiz, shall we? The only thing better than reading books is talking about books. Books = Life as everybody knows.
The Big Book Quiz Part 1
- Do you prefer reading old-fashioned books or e-books?
Tough question. A few years ago, I would have answered “real books”, but I admit that I prefer e-books nowadays. Why? For several reasons:
a) They’re cheaper. Swedish e-books are, in general, more expensive than paper books (and Swedish publishers are complaining e-books don’t sell!), but I buy them through the US Kindle store; thank God for deals of the day! I buy so many books that I can’t afford to buy hardcovers at full price.
The only exception is the annual book sale, a big thing in Sweden. All bookstores (including online) would offer discounted books, starting the last Tuesday in February (prettily timed to around the 25th when the monthly salaries are paid out in Sweden) and until the beginning of March. Heaven for book lovers. Then I would load my book bag with hard-covers.
b) They don’t take up any room. I have a library room, and it’s crammed with books, obviously. There are books in every room of the house, except the guest toilet. That last bastion will fall, too, eventually. If you have as many books as I have (we’re talking several thousand), you appreciate anything not requiring more storage space.
c) They’re portable. Nowadays, this is not an issue anymore, since we’re not traveling anywhere because of the pandemic.
But back in the golden days, pre-Covid-19, when the only travel annoyance was the safety checks or flight delays, I would always bring at least a couple of books with me.
In fact, one of my fears was that I would run out of reading material during the trip. I would read while waiting at the gate, during boarding, during the flight, and at the hotel before going to bed. You cannot imagine how many books I would need for a longer trip! Some people are terrified of flying. Me? Running out of reading material.
To say nothing about the weight or bringing the “wrong” book, you know, when you feel like reading a science-fiction novel, and all you have is a biography.
Enter e-books. Suddenly, I didn’t have to worry about luggage weight, running out of books to read, or bringing the wrong books.
d) They’re not set in stone; or paper, rather. I love being able to customize the page color, font type, and size. I wear glasses, and I appreciate everything that helps my eyes, like larger fonts.
To cut a long story short, e-books are practical for several reasons. But I do miss being able to argue with the writer on the margins (I know you can add comments in e-books, but it’s just not the same), leafing through the pages to see what my old me commented on, or that unmistakable smell of a freshly bought book. Oh well, February 25th is almost here.
- Paperback or hard-cover?
Another tough question. A few years ago, it would have been hard-covers; they feel luxurious, like books should. But nowadays, I’m more for convenience (age may have something to do with it). Paperbacks are smaller, take up less room, and are more pleasant to hold when reading.
- Genre or Nobel Prize winner?
Both. A good book is a good book, period. There’s this misconception that genre books are somehow the lesser literature. I don’t buy that. Good quality genre books are good books; forget the “genre.” Publishers and booksellers invented genres to help them sell books.
- Do you finish reading a bad book or do you abandon it?
I struggled with this my whole life; I couldn’t NOT finish a book, no matter how bad or boring it was. I would feel guilty because that poor author had worked so hard to write a book, and I, the reader, simply discarded that effort. I felt the author’s eyes drilling on my back, truly I did.
I’m happy to report that I realized eventually that I couldn’t continue that way. You know, so many books, so little time … Nowadays, I curate my reading carefully; it’s not often I have to abandon reading a book. But if I have to do it, I’m quick and remorseless about it.
- Do you read translations or original language?
An easy one. Original for the languages I speak (Romanian, Swedish, English, French), translation for the rest. I don’t count German here, although I’ve taken it for eight years at school and can manage some light reading.
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Ray Bradbury’s Writing Advice For Writers To Be
In one of his lectures collected in the slim volume titled “Ray Bradbury: On Writing,” Bradbury talks about young people dreaming of writing a novel. His advice? Start small. Don’t start with a novel, which will take a long time to write, only to find out at the end it wasn’t good enough.
On Writing
Practice your skills, learn how to write by writing short stories. Write one short story a week. You’ll have the satisfaction of completing something in a relatively short period of time, and you’ll learn a lot. You’ll learn to compact things; to look for ideas; to see a metaphor, and how to write it. At the end of the year, there should be at least one good story. And you’re learning the craft.
Write What You Want to Read
Write what you want to read. Write about what you love, what you hate; write about what you fear; write with joy and abandon. Writing should be fun, not a chore.
Writing is not a serious business. It’s a joy and a celebration. You should be having fun at it. (…) I’ve never worked a day in my life. The joy of writing has propelled me from day to day and year to year. I want you to envy my joy.
On Reading
As a writer, you should write a lot, and read a lot, too. The library is your school of writing, as it was his. Ray Bradbury never went to college; he couldn’t afford it. But he went to the library several times a week and, in his words, “graduated from the library”.
I want you to live the fever pitch. I want you to go to the library. The great thing about libraries is surprise, isn’t it? To pull books off the shelf and not know what they are (…).
What Should You Read?
Read and learn from the best. Every night, before going to bed, read one short story, one poem, one essay from various fields. Do this for a thousand nights, and you’ll have a solid education.
Ray Bradbury’s Recommended Reading
Short Stories
Short Stories
- Roald Dahl
- Guy De Maupassant
- John Cheever
- Richard Matheson
- John Collier
- Edith Wharton
- Katherine Anne Porter
- Eudora Welty
- Washington Irving
- Melville
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
Essays
Poems
- Aldous Huxley
- Loren Eiseley
- George Bernard Shaw
- G. K. Chesterton
Go back and read the classics.
- Shakespeare
- Alexander Pope
- Robert Frost
My Reading Education
I grew up in a home where there weren’t many books, but the ones we had were all classics. There was a book series collecting the classic works of both Romanian and foreign authors of all time. That was a gold mine for a child with an inquisitive mind, thirsting for knowledge, curious about everything. My parents didn’t forbid me to read any books; thankfully, they didn’t practice age-appropriate reading.
So I grew up reading Jules Verne, Daniel Defoe, and Mark Twain’s children’s books. In fact, my sister read them to me before I could read them myself. You could say I was primed for reading (thank you, sis!).
But I also read Balzac, Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, W. M. Thackeray, Emily Brontë, and Charlotte Brontë. I probably read Anna Karenina, Vanity Fair, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre a dozen times before I went to university.
At the university, we were required to read the classics. I was one of the few students who actually read the whole list.
They’re classic for a reason: they’re well written and show us the universal in people, humanity, our world. They endured hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Which best-sellers of today would still be best-sellers in fifty years?
Long story short, reading classic works is a good, free education. I would add Anton Chekhov, Sake, and Katherine Mansfield to Bradbury’s list of short stories.
I leave you with the best quote from this lecture (The Hygiene of Writing).
Don’t live on your god damned computers and the internet and all that crap. Go to the library.
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A Highly Personal List Of Best Dystopian Novels
It’s no secret I love a good dystopian novel, and if it’s science-fiction, even better. It seems that I’m not alone: almost all of these novels have been turned into movies or TV series. Although, after living through 2020, I’m not sure how popular dystopian books or movies would be. But who knows? Maybe we’ll still watch them and find solace in their misery; our world is still better. (Is it? Here you have some food for thought to last you a while).
Ranting done, here’s my highly personal list of best dystopian novels.
I’ve been a longtime fan of Stephen KIng’s novels (and his On Writing is my writing bible). I like all his books, but some I love a bit more, and The Stand remains my favorite; the best Sci-Fi/Horror and the ultimate Stephen King book. It’s huge (around 1.400 pages, and I love to lose myself in long books) and spellbinding, sucking you in and never letting go. If you haven’t read it, I envy you that first reading.
I’m looking forward to watching the new series, although the reviews have been lukewarm. It seems Stephen Kind doesn’t have any luck with the film adaptation of his novels. The Shining is the exception that proves the rule. Cell was…decent, but that’s about it; unfortunately, because King’s novels are made to be brought to the screen. Bonus: Stephen King ranks the best and the worst adaptations of his books.
Station Eleven is a deeply melancholy haunting book, a page-turner and a poem at once, set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse. Think Cormac McCarthy meets Joan Didion.
Twenty years after a flu pandemic that wiped out most of humanity, a small group of actors and musicians – The Traveling Symphony – travel in a caravan to various communities to play music and perform Shakespeare plays in a post-apocalyptic world. “Because survival is insufficient.” says on the side of their caravan—storytelling as a means of spiritual survival, hope, and connection.
A mini-series based on the book is in production. In an eerie coincidence, it began filming in Chicago in mid-January, the same week the first case of coronavirus was confirmed in the U.S.
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road. A deeply unsettling, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son’s fight to survive, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. It’s a simple and short melancholic book, with a raw emotional pull that offers nothing to comfort.
A father and his son walk alone in a post-apocalyptic, devastated America, where nothing moves but the gray ashes of the snow and the unforgivingly cold wind. Sustained only by their unconditional love, they move slowly and cautiously towards the coast, a beacon of hope in a land that lost all hope.
Starring Viggo Mortensen in one of his best roles, the 2009 movie is an excellent adaptation; visually compelling, grim and desolate and terrible as you’d expect from the book. Depressing too, I won’t lie; The Road is not one of those end-of-the-world movies with lucky escapes, unlikely action scenes, and a happy end.
- Marlen Haushofer, The Wall, written in a stream of conscious style that never becomes monotonous, is a haunting survival story, disturbing and beautiful, by the Austrian author Marlen Haushofer (1920 – 1970).
The book is a journal kept by a never-named narrator, a middle-aged woman, the only survivor of an unknown event that killed everyone and sealed her off by a transparent and impenetrable wall somewhere in the Austrian Alps.
It’s a reflective book, going very slowly, and if you’re looking for a fast-paced, action-filled end-of-the-world novel, this is not it. It’s more like The Road, terrible things happening in an unforgiving world, narrated in a slow and desolate way, to become unsettling and heart-breaking stories.
There’s an Austrian movie based on the book, Die Wand (2012), but it’s not largely available outside Austria and Germany. It’s on Amazon Prime in some locations; sadly, not in Sweden. Here’s the trailer. And an interview with the director, Julian Pölsler, talking about the book and challenges in making the movie.
- Richard Matheson, I Am Legend. Most people think about the 2007 movie (starring Will Smith) when confronted with the title, but I Am Legend is first and foremost a very good book from the golden age of science-fiction.
The hero, Robert Neville, seems to be the only human left in the world, the rest being killed or turned into vampires. He spends his nights barricaded indoors, praying for dawn; and his days, killing as many vampires as he can while they’re sleeping.
Matheson combines science-fiction and horror (including vampires, decades before vampires became fashionable) into a fundamental piece about humanity; about loneliness, survival, and prejudice in a plague devastated world.
The movie is fine but has little to do with the book. It’s good to know if you’ve seen the movie and want to read the book.
- C. A. Fletcher, A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World. A heart-wrenching mix of sadness and hope with a surprising twist towards the latter part of the book and with a hoped-for but hard-to-imagine end.
I don’t want to spoil your discovery of this gem of a book. Suffice to say that there’s indeed a dog (in danger), a loving human desperate to save the said dog, all in the background of a post-apocalyptic world.
It’s a young-adult book, but don’t let that fool you. It’s a thrilling and heartwarming book, and I didn’t want it to end. And when it did, I hoped Fletcher would come back to this world and give us more.
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The Zone: No. 11, Dec 31, 2020 – Special Edition
Welcome to this special, end-of-the-year edition of The Zone! Banksy‘s perfect illustration of 2020, various ways to exorcise 2020, books of the year picked by Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, and others, the lost day of Kiribati, and more. Happy New Year!
I think we all agree that the most merciful thing you could say about 2020 is that it is over. There were glimpses of light and moments of joy, of course, and those we should cherish. Here’s the last list of the year. Have a wonderful weekend, stay safe, and be kind to one another. I’ll be back next year!
- A perfect illustration of 2020: Banksy Ends 2020 With New COVID-19 Street Art
- This year has seen so many seismic events that Oxford Dictionaries has expanded its word of the year to encompass several “Words of an Unprecedented Year”. Casper Grathwohl, the president of Oxford Dictionaries, said: “I’ve never witnessed a year in language like the one we’ve just had. The Oxford team was identifying hundreds of significant new words and usages as the year unfolded, dozens of which would have been a slam dunk for Word of the Year at any other time. It’s both unprecedented and a little ironic – in a year that left us speechless, 2020 has been filled with new words unlike any other.” You can download the report here (it’s fascinating, at least if you’re as interested in languages as I am). Bonus: From COVID to curbside, 2020 changed our vocabulary too.
- How to exorcise 2020. I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking about exorcism these days. I’m tempted to use the Colombian tradition of burning the “old year” (año viejo). It seems fitting, somehow.
- Good News Stories That Will Help Restore Your Faith in the World. We have to remember that there’s much more in the world than the terrible news television and newspapers are feeding us. And that people are good.
- National Geographic‘s special issue 2020: The Year in Pictures (January 2021). The magazine has never singled out a year for such a retrospective in its 133 years. But then, 2020 was special, wasn’t it? Bonus: Nat Geo’s most compelling images of the 21st century and best animal photos of 2020.
- The most striking images of 2020, selected by BBC Culture. It’s fascinating how one year can be gone so quickly and so slowly at the same time. We happened to be in Australia during the devastating bush fires, and we believed that would be our most dramatic memories of the year. All that seems to be so far away now; bush fires merely an inconvenience.
- 1,273 People Share Their Best Life Lessons from 2020. From Mark Manson’s excellent newsletter Mindf*ck Monday. He asked his subscribers: “What have been your biggest lessons from 2020?” And 1.273 people answered. It’s fascinating reading. I found that the best blogs and newsletters (and Manson has both) have great readers, and very often, their comments are as interesting as the article.
- Austin Kleon and Seth Godin‘s end of the year book lists. These men are responsible for many of my book purchases. It’s a good thing. Austin Kleon has a great newsletter, too, by the way.
- Forget New Year’s Resolutions and Conduct a ‘Past Year Review’ Instead says Tim Ferriss, and I agree. This is something I do every year, although in a slightly different form. I was thinking about publishing it here, but it felt too personal. I couldn’t. Maybe next year. Ferriss has a short (five items) but always interesting newsletter. Bonus: Chris Bailey‘s How to conduct an end-of-year productivity review.
- I can’t resist a book list containing the words “ultimate best books.” Literary Hub compiled their Ultimate Best Books for 2020-list. Bonus: the award-winning novels of 2020.
- Associated Press: Publishing saw upheaval in 2020, but ‘books are resilient’.
- The Smithsonian Magazine‘s editors picked 25 favorite articles from the year we’d rather forget.
- The Farnam Street team lists their favorite posts of the year.
- There Is No Such Thing as Normal— So Stop Waiting for It. Ryan Holiday about wishing for things to go back to normal.
- Speaking of Ryan Holiday, here’s his list of the best books he read in 2020.
- Two Widowed Penguins Overlooking Melbourne Skyline Together Wins Best Photo of 2020. Beautiful and heart-wrenching.
- Two Tenants Received Children’s Santa Letters So They’ve Been Answering Them the Last 10 Years. Awww.
- 31 December 1994 was skipped altogether in Kiribati as the Phoenix Islands, and Line Islands changed time zones from UTC-11 to UTC+13 and UTC-10 to UTC+14, respectively. Huh! Imagine being born on that day!
My Zone
Most Popular Posts in 2020
- A Leap of Faith
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- The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself
- What 2020 Taught Me…So Far
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- The Zone: No. 8 – December 3, 2020
- Garden Life
- The Zone: No. 9 – December 10, 2020
- How To Take Better Photos With Your Phone
A Quote I’m Pondering
Yes, I’ve always been a dreamer, and yes, I have always tried. And dreams are special things. But dreams are of no value if they’re not equipped with wings and feet and hands and all that. If you’re going to make a dream come true, you’ve got to work with it. You can’t just sit around. That’s a wish. That’s not a dream.
Dolly Parton, in an interview in Bust magazine
From My Photo Archives
The red walls of the Lidingö Boat Yard reflected on the ice.
I wish you a very, very Happy New Year! May 2021 bring you and yours much joy and happiness!
The Best Books I Read in 2020
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
Cicero
I’m grateful for having both, and the time and peace of mind to enjoy them. I read two or three books a week, and I read every day. I cannot image a life without books. Here are a few that stayed with me a little longer this year, in no particular order.
Best Fiction Books
- Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House. This is probably the greatest haunted house story ever written. The Haunting movie from 1999 is based on the book. This is a re-read; I usually read it every now and then around Halloween.
- Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Shirley Jackson’s beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family’s dark secret. I loved how the uncanny denouement unravels in this short piece.
- Stephen King, The Institute. The most riveting and unforgettable story of kids confronting evil since It. I couldn’t put it down.
- Stephen King & Joe Hill, In the Tall Grass. This is a novella collaboration between Stephen King and Joe Hill, a short horror masterpiece. Trivia: Joe Hill is King’s son. Stephen King and his wife, Tabitha (herself a novelist), were inspired by the Swedish trade unionist Joe Hill (formerly Joel Hägglund) and named their son Joseph Hillston. When the son grew up to be a writer, he chose Joe Hill as his pseudonym.
- Marlen Haushofer, The Wall is a haunting survival story, disturbing and beautiful, by the Austrian author Marlen Haushofer (1920 – 1970). If you love animals, you will love this book. And maybe shed a tear or two. I listened to the book first, narrated by Kathe Mazur, and I cannot recommend the audio edition enough. Mazur’s soft and calm voice deepens and enhances the text.
- Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic. An isolated mansion. A chillingly charismatic aristocrat. And a brave socialite drawn to expose their treacherous secrets. . . . “a terrifying twist on classic gothic horror” (Kirkus Reviews) set in glamorous 1950s Mexico. I read this in one day.
- Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow. An old-fashioned novel (in the best sense of the term) about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel. The best kind of escapism, the perfect book to curl up with and forget the world outside.
- Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire. Space opera and mystery, winner of the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novel. I’m looking forward to the sequel, A Desolation Called Peace.
- Thomas Olde Henvett, HEX is a chilling, deeply unsettling story, rooted in traditional folk horror, a quite obvious nod to Stephen King’s Pet Sematary.
Best Non-Fiction Books
- Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes. I know I’ve just said the list has no particular order; however, I did want to put this book first. It changed my life, as dramatically as it sounds. I was looking for a better way of organizing reading notes before kicking off the research on my non-fiction book and found this book. It describes an excellent note-taking system, indeed, but its’ great benefit lies in helping you focus on thinking, understanding, and developing new ideas in writing. It sounded like it would be too good to be true, but I was intrigued enough to give it a try, and I was hooked once I did. The method was developed for academic writing, and the book is heavy on theory and light on the application. If you can stand it and give it a try, you’ll be hooked too. This site, entirely dedicated to it, is a good complement to the book. It provides more concrete examples and practical applications.
- David Allen, Getting Things Done Oldie but goldie re-read. I needed a productivity boost (see above), and Allen’s GTD method is still relevant.
- James Clear, Atomic Habits. Accomplish more by focusing on less. Actionable and practical strategies to build positive habits by focusing on small improvements that would build up over time.
- Chase Jarvis, Creative Calling. An excellent book on creativity, and not only for artists.
- Adam Savage, Every Tool’s a Hammer. Adam Savage shares his golden rules of creativity, from finding inspiration to following through and successfully turning your idea into reality.
- Scott Adams, How To Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. Blasting clichéd career advice, Dilbert‘s creator recounts the humorous ups and downs of his career, revealing the outsized role of luck in our lives and how best to play the system.
- M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled. A classic that had me hooked with its opening line: Life is difficult.
- Svetlana Alexievich, Chernobyl Prayer. The horrific history of the Chernobyl disaster by the winner of the Nobel prize in literature 2015; the HBO series is based on it. They’re both excellent.
- Adam Higginbotham, Midnight in Chernobyl. A powerful investigation into Chernobyl and how propaganda, secrecy, and myth have obscured the true story of one of history’s worst nuclear disasters.
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